“If I thought you could like me! Oh! Violet, can you—ever so little?” He took her hand in both his, and his handsome young face was as that of a man in some dreadful hour pleading for his life. There were the glow of hope, the rapture of entreaty, the lines of agony.
“I like you, William. I do like you,” she said, so low that no other ears but his, I think, could have heard it, and the little wood anemones nodded their pretty heads, and the groups of wood-sorrel round trembled, it seemed with joy; and William said, in a wild whisper—
“My darling—oh! Vi—my darling. My only love—dearer and dearer, every year. Oh! darling, my love is everlasting!” and he kissed her hand again and again, and he kissed her lips, and the leaves and flowers were hushed, nature was listening, pleased, and, I think, the angels looking down smiled on those fair young mortals, and those blessed moments that come with the glory of paradise, and being gone are remembered for ever.
“Why, young people, what has become of you?” cried the well known voice of Miss Wagget. “Ho! here you are. I guessed I should find you among the trees; grand old timber, Mr. Maubray.” The guilty pair approached Miss Wagget side by side, looking as unconcerned as they could, and she talked on. “I sometimes think, Mr. Maubray, that Gilroyd must be a much older place than most people fancy. That house, now, what style is it in? My brother says there were such houses built in Charles the Second’s time, but the timber you know is—particularly the oaks down there—the trees are enormously old, and there are traces of a moat. I don’t understand these things, but my brother says, at the side of the house toward the road,” and so on kind Miss Wagget laboured, little assisted by William, upon topics about which none of them were thinking.
That evening Miss Wagget was seized with a sort of musical frenzy, and sat down and played through ever so many old books of such pieces as were current in her youth, and very odd and quaint they sound now—more changed the fashion of our music even than of our language.
I’m afraid that the young people were not so attentive as they might, and William whispered incessantly, sitting beside Violet on the sofa.
It was rather late when that little musical party broke up.
To Gilroyd, William walked in a dream, in the air, all the world at his feet, a demi-god. And that night when Vi, throwing her arms about Miss Wagget’s neck, confided in her ear the momentous secret, the old lady exclaimed gaily—
“Thank you for nothing! a pinch for stale news! Why I knew it the moment I saw your face under the trees there, and I’m very happy. I’m delighted. I’ve been planning it, and hoping for it this ever so long—and poor fellow! He was so miserable.”
