In the drawing room the guests stopped on, and never missed the two who had stolen away across the moonlit lawn. One girl, it is true, might have been noticed to cast some anxious glances toward the open window, and the companion who talked to her could not help observing that she scarcely replied to his remarks, and was not fully alive to his witticisms; but the rest of the little world jogged on its way merrily enough, unconscious of the Paradise which was so close to them in the Rectory garden, and of the Purgatory which one little soul was enduring upstairs.
"Hilda," said Quentyns, when they had stood for some time under the beech tree, and had said many things each to the other, and felt a great deal more than could ever be put into words. "Hilda," said Quentyns, and all the poetry of the lovely summer evening seemed to have got into his eyes and filled his voice, "I give you all, remember, all that a man can give. I give you the love of my entire heart. My present is yours, my future is to be yours. I live for you, Hilda—I shall always live for you. Think what that means."
"I can quite understand it," replied Hilda, "for I also live for you. I am yours, Jasper, for now and always."
"And I am a very jealous man," said Quentyns. "When I give all, I like to get all."
Hilda laughed.
"How solemnly you speak," she said, stepping back a pace, and an almost imperceptible jar coming into her voice. Then she came close again. "The fault you will have to find with me is this, Jasper," she said, looking fully at him with her sweet eyes; "I shall love you, if anything, too well. No one can ever come between us, unless it is dear little Judy."
"Judy! Don't you think you make too much fuss about that child? She is such a morbid little piece of humanity."
"Not a bit of it. You don't quite understand her. She and I are much more than ordinary sisters to each other. I feel as if I were in a certain sense Judy's mother. When mother died she left Judy to me. Little darling! No one ever had a more faithful or a nobler heart. You must get fond of her too, for my sake; won't you, Jasper?"
"I'll do anything for your sake, you know that, Hilda. But don't let us talk of Judy any more just now—let us——"
"Mr. Quentyns, is that your voice I hear?" called Aunt Marjorie, from the drawing room. "And, Hilda, ought you to be out with the dew falling so heavily?"