“I’ll show you! you naughty girl! Call Otto if you like. I’ll show you!” and he grasped her wrists and shook her in fun, whilst she acted as if he hurt her terribly. Then he assisted her to rise, and she promised, still laughing, not again to show so little appreciation of the beauties of nature.
The children with their English uncle were standing hand in hand, and trying to measure the tree.
“Absurd of Théodore to run after Eline like that,” muttered Frédérique, and Etienne overheard her.
“I say, you are getting tiresome,” he cried. “Why, you can’t bear a joke any longer.”
By the side of the little church there was a hilly pine wood. There Eline sat down on the moss, and rested her head on her hand. Otto sat beside her. They could just hear the faint tinkling of a distant bell. It was church time. Some country people in glossy broadcloth and shining silk aprons were walking, prayer-book in hand, along the road, and Eline with her eyes followed them, themselves scarcely visible behind the close-standing stems. The scattered church-goers were few in number; a few—late-comers—followed hurriedly, and all was quiet under the peaceful influence of a rustic Sunday rest. In the distance was heard the bleating of a goat.
It is true Eline had imagined the Horze more grandiose and luxurious, and the very simple life that was led at the country house made her smile at times when she called to mind Ouida’s English castles, full of dukes and princes, such as those in which she had her abode during her watch at Aunt Vere’s sick-bed. It was certainly very different, that splendour of an ideal aristocracy, and this simplicity of a well-to-do but necessarily frugal aristocracy, and yet she would not have exchanged her present circumstances for anything, and she talked smilingly to Otto about Ouida and [[197]]the English castles, and declared she gave the preference to the Horze, as she preferred him, her poor country squire, to the wealthy Scotch duke, after the type of an Erceldoune or a Strathmore, such as she used to dream about formerly.
Yes; Eline felt her happiness growing greater and greater in that peaceful solitude beneath the dark pine leaves, whilst Otto’s voice, deep and full, sounded in her ears. He told her how he could not yet understand that she was his for ever, and that ere long they should be as one; and he told her that she had but one fault—that she misjudged herself. He, yes, he knew her as she really was; he told her that there were latent treasures hidden within her, and that it would be his privilege to try and bring them to light. In the fullness of her happiness she became frank and outspoken, even to herself, as she never had been; she looked at him almost pityingly, and answered that he would yet discover in her much that was bad, when he knew her better. No, indeed, he did not thoroughly know her, although he thought so. There was so much going on in one’s heart that one could not always disclose; at least, so it was in her case, and she must confess that her thoughts were not always of the best, neither was she always so even-tempered as she appeared to be whenever he saw her. She could be peevish, and nervous, and melancholy without real cause; but certainly for his sake she would endeavour to transform herself into something like the image he had formed of her for himself; but what an idealist he was! She felt herself pure and good in that confession; she knew now that she could freely reveal to him thoughts which she would not always have confessed to herself; neither was she any more in fear of losing him through some careless word; she saw how he loved her, and how she must be dearest to him in the moments when she spoke to him about herself in that simple way, and often it seemed to her as though he was her conscience, to which she could say all that a girl might say. And the more she depreciated herself in those moments of sincerity, the more he adored her, the more he thought he could read her very soul beneath that glamour of beauty and grace.
They heard the hymns of the peasantry proceeding from the church, like a deep, broad stream of simple piety, and in their present mood that unskilled flood of song seemed full of a poetry that mingled with the poetry of the dark tints of the foliage, with the fragrance of the pine wood, with the love that was in their [[198]]hearts. And Eline felt her heart swell, and she raised herself up a little, and resting her curly little head on his bosom, she could not keep herself from twining her arms around his neck, and when she felt herself thus leaning against him with her bosom on his heart a sudden sob shook her.
“Eline, dearest, what—what is the matter?” he softly asked.
“Nothing,” she answered, nearly dying in the exquisite ecstasy of her love and her great happiness; “nothing; let me be—I am so—so happy!”