"I could not make up my mind to it," he replied, giving me a look of half reproach. "I could not go without bidding you once more good-bye."
He held out his hand to me; I gave him mine across the gate. He took it, and keeping it clasped in his, he turned to Cornelius, and said with repressed emotion:
"I don't know why I should be ashamed of it—I am not ashamed of it—Mr. O'Reilly, I love her with my whole heart. I don't think there is another girl like her; at least I am very sure there is not another one for me. I think she likes me; but, hard as I begged, she would promise me nothing— she could not she said without your knowledge or consent; I said I wanted nobody's knowledge or consent, to like her. We parted rather angrily; but I thought better of it, and came back to speak to you, since she wished it. And look! even here in your presence, she takes her hand from me, lest you should not like it."
I did, indeed, withdraw my hand from his, as he spoke, partly because from friendship William had gone to love, partly because I had met the look of Cornelius, which disturbed me.
"Mr. O'Reilly," said William, looking at him very fixedly, "do you object?"
"No," coldly answered Cornelius.
William opened the gate, and stepped in with a triumphant look.
"Do you hear that, Daisy?" he exclaimed.
"Do not misunderstand me," quietly said Cornelius. "I do not object; but if Daisy wishes for my advice, I certainly advise her not to enter at seventeen into an engagement destined to last her whole life. The human heart changes; it will often loathe the very object of its former wishes, and often, too, learn to long too late for that which it once dreaded as utter misery."
"I shall not change!" exclaimed William, giving him an impatient look: "but of course if you advise Daisy against promises, there will be none. I need none to bind me to her; and if she will only promise to try and like me—"