"More than it gratifies me."
"As the chances are that I may be killed and buried in the East, will—will you give me this to lie in the trenches with me?" said I, curling the soft ringlet round my finger, with mock gallantry, while my heart beat wildly with hope and expectation.
She turned her dark, full eyes to mine, with an expression of mingled surprise and sweetness.
"Take it now, Mr. Norcliff, for heaven's sake, rather than come for it, as William Calderwood came," said the sprightly Miss Wilford, taking a pair of scissors from a gueridon table that stood close by; and ere Lady Loftus could speak, the dark ringlet was cut off, and consigned to my pocket-book, while my lips trembled as I whispered my thanks, and laughingly said—
"What says Pope?
'The meeting points the sacred hair dissever,
From the fair head for ever, and for ever.'"
"This is all very well, Mr. Norcliff," said she, laughing behind her fan; "but I cannot submit to be shorn in jest, and shall insist on having that lock of hair from you to-morrow."
She had a lovely smile in her dark eyes, and a half-pout on her beautiful lip; but Cora—I know not why—looked on me sadly, and shook her pretty head with an air of warning, that seemed as much as to say I had erred in my gallantry, if not in my generalship.
That night my heart beat happily; I went to sleep with that jetty tress beneath my pillow; thus, for me, Cousin Cora had not in vain told her quaint old legend of "The Clenched Hand."
CHAPTER X.