Then for the first time, when he felt her soft warm arm and delicate hand clasping his neck, half fearfully and half caressingly; when her cheek was close to his; when her breath mingled with his own, and her thick dark hair swept over his face, a strange and joyous thrill ran through him—a new and giddy emotion took possession of his heart.
Mysterious longings, aspirations, and hopes glowed within him, and in mid-stream, even when the foaming water swept past with stones and clay, and roots of aged trees, Quentin did what he had never done before, he pressed his lips—and his soul seemed on them—again and again to those of Flora Warrender, and he murmured he knew not what in her ear, and she did not repel him.
Her excitement, perhaps, was too great; but we suspect that she was partly frightened and partly pleased. He landed her safely on the opposite bank, and again the castle-bell was heard waking the echoes of the woods.
The Girvan was passed now, and to speak metaphorically, that classic stream, the Rubicon, too!
They had divined the great secret of their hearts, and, hand in hand, in happy but thoughtful silence—Quentin, however, seeming the most abashed—they returned to Rohallion, both powerfully agitated by the new and sudden turn their affection seemed to have taken.
When their eyes met, their pulses quickened, and their colour came and went.
From that hour a change came over them; they were more reserved, less frank, apparently, and, outwardly, less joyous. In the presence of Flora, Quentin grew timid, and he became more earnestly, but quietly, assiduous to her than before.
Each, in absence, thought more of the other's image or idea; and each weighed the words, and treasured the stolen smiles and tender tones of the other.
They were lovers now!
It was the voice of nature that spoke in their hearts. Flora had long loved her young companion without exactly knowing it. The episode of the river had brought the passion to a culminating point, and the veil was raised now. She saw his position and her own; and, while experiencing all a young girl's pride and rapture in the assurance that she has a lover, a strange sense of trouble came with her new emotion of joy.