For some minutes neither could find words to speak, so supreme was the mutual happiness of the sudden reunion.
'How brown you are! but how thin, and how much older you look!' said Dulcie, surveying him with bright but tearful eyes. 'I can scarcely believe you to be the same Florian that left me only a year ago or so.'
'Ay, Dulcie, pet; but soldiering, especially soldiering in the ranks, takes a lot out of a fellow. But I am the same Florian that left you then, with a heavy and hopeless heart indeed.'
'And now——'
'Now I shall leave you no more.'
'What dreadful places you must have been in, Florian; what dangers you have faced; what sufferings undergone, my love!'
'The thought of you lightened and brightened them all to me, Dulcie,' said he, while into her bright little English face came that wonderful and adoring smile only possible on the lips and in the eyes of a woman who is in love, and for the object of her love.
She told him of her simple plans and humble prospects, of her hope in the vicar, why she had left Craigengowan, and how she came to be in that poor and cheap lodging-room near Oxford Street.
'We must not lose sight of each other now, my darling,' said he, as she nestled her face on his breast. 'Let us get married at once, love, and then it must be service in India for me. Are you ready to face heat, it may be fever, and Heaven knows what more, Dulcie?'
'Every peril, if with you!'