“Oh! that’ll be all right,” said Tom.
And then Lizzie had come down again, looking bewitchingly beautiful, and Tom spent an hour of ecstasy, after which he took up his hat to go.
Lizzie knew the errand he was now going on—to speak to the dowager—and she wished tearful success to him, and gave him a pretty adieu as he went off exultant: for he said his mother would never refuse her consent to an angel!
How he fared in his enterprise has been already detailed, for as soon as he hinted at the thing his mother had broken out with her characteristic diatribe.
And now the pleasant little drama was brought to an abrupt conclusion. It was all over! He could not marry Lizzie without his mother’s consent; the crimson sea of love was now covered with the heaving billows of adversity. He would go abroad somewhere, for he should go mad if he stopped here and could not see his darling, and Lizzie, of course, she would die of a broken heart: it was always the usual routine in tragedies like this.
Tom was very miserable, for he had yet to see Lizzie and her brother—from whom he had gone off so exultant—and tell of his defeat.
The world was a blank to him now!
“Fiddle-de-dee!”