"And you love me?"
"Yes," she said.
"Really and truly. You know what I mean?" He spoke quietly and slowly, but his voice trembled.
"How could I say what I have said—else?" There was a sob in her voice as she spoke, and yet the sob sounded like a laugh.
"Thank God!"
He did not believe, this man, that God existed, and yet it was the only way that he could express the great joy of his heart. Never, until then, had he known what happiness meant. The old, hopeless, purposeless past was forgotten; that night his history began anew.
After dinner that night, John Castlemaine and Radford Leicester talked long and earnestly. It was no light matter to the father to promise his child in marriage; moreover, although he admired Leicester, and while he believed that a great career was possible to him, he did not feel quite happy. For John Castlemaine belonged to the old school of thought, and he had no sympathy with the modern looseness of ideas. He came of a stock who for more than a hundred years had fought the battle of religious liberty, and who had been ready to sacrifice their goods, even their lives, for principle. He was a Puritan of the best order. He retained all their old strong characteristics, he stood for their noblest ideals, without adhering to much that was sunless and repugnant. He was a happy, genial man, kind almost to indulgence as far as his daughter went, but he was strong in his hatred of the so-called morals of that class to which Leicester was supposed to belong. Moreover, Olive was his only child. Upon her he had poured the wealth of his affection, and thus the thought of giving her to a man was no light matter. Could he then give her to Leicester? It was a hard struggle; but in the end Leicester won. He spoke to John Castlemaine freely and frankly, and he spoke with such fervour, such strength of purpose, that in spite of all he had heard, John Castlemaine was convinced of the other's worthiness.
"But not yet, not yet," said the older man. "I cannot bear to lose her yet."
"But why need we wait?" asked Leicester. "We are neither of us children, and I need her, Mr. Castlemaine. She is all the world to me."