When he came and put his arm round her waist, and asked in a low voice, "Elizabeth, will you be mine?" she felt, for the first time in her life, on the point of fainting. She hardly knew what she did, but pushed him involuntarily away from her.
He seized her hand afresh, and asked, "Elizabeth, will you be my wife?"
She was very pale, as she answered—"Yes!"
But when he wanted again to take her by the waist, she sprang suddenly back, and looked at him with an expression of terror.
"Elizabeth!" he said, tenderly, and tried again to approach her, "what is the matter with you? If you only knew how I have longed for this moment."
"Not now—no more now!" she pleaded, holding out her hand to him.
"Another time."
"But you say 'Yes,' Elizabeth—that you are my—?" But he felt that she wanted him to go now.
After he had gone, she sat there on a box for a long time in silence, gazing straight before her.
So it had actually come to pass! Her heart beat so that she could hear it herself, and she seemed to feel a dull pain there. Her face, little by little, acquired a fixed, cold expression: she was thinking that he was then telling his stepmother of their engagement, and fortifying himself for her reception of the announcement.
She expected to be called down. But no summons came; and at last she decided to go without being called.