'Happy indeed! But who could fail to be happy here? I am much of a day-dreamer, Miss Montgomerie, and often it has seemed to me, in my solitary moments and thoughtful moods, that some mysterious sympathy or bond was linking my existence with that of another, but who that other was I knew not.'
'A strange idea!'
'You will smile at my folly, as you no doubt deem it. So, too, have I thought there was something singularly sweet in the idea, but sweeter still now that I know, the soul that I dreamed of was you.'
Mary's hand trembled on his arm, but she made no reply, and stood with half-averted face.
'My lips have been silent,' he resumed, bending over her, as she still further averted her face and looked down; 'yet you must have guessed the cherished hope of my heart, and learned, even from my glance—that I—that—that I love you!'
So Mrs. Garth's friendly warnings all came to nothing, and even Hew's existence was forgotten!
'I saw from the first,' said Mary, in a low and agitated voice, 'from the first, that you admired me, but—but, I never thought that——'
'That I loved you?'
'I know not what I thought.'
'Oh, Mary—may I call you so?—I have no words to tell you, Mary, darling, how fondly, how deeply and tenderly I love you!'