“But were you really fascinated, and were you really in love,” exclaimed Disney, infinitely delighted at this little speech of his wife’s, “in love with a battered campaigner—or did you just think you liked me a little bit, only because you wanted to get away from Dinan?”
“I really—really—really loved you,” she answered softly, looking up at him with eyes dimmed by tears, as he drew her nearer to him in his gladness. “I was not tired of Dinan—or my life there—and my heart went out to you at once, because you were good and noble, and seemed to care for me.”
“There was no seeming in it, Isola. I was knocked over at once, like a pigeon out of a trap. I had been in love with you three weeks—three centuries it seemed—before I could screw up my courage so far as to think of proposing for you. And then if Hazelrigg hadn’t helped me with your father, I don’t suppose I should ever have broken the ice. But when he—the colonel—showed himself so frank and willing—and the way was all made smooth for me from a domestic point of view—and when I saw that kind little look in your eyes, and the shy little smile—yes, you are smiling so now—I took heart of grace, and stormed the citadel. Do you remember the evening I asked you to be my wife, Isola; that starlit night when I had been dining with your people, and you and Gwendolen, and Hazelrigg and I went out upon the terrace to look at the stars, and the river, and the twinkling lights of the boats down by the quay, and the diligence driving over the bridge, deep, deep down in the valley below us? Do you remember how I lured you away from the other two, and how we stood under the vine-leaves in the berceau, and I found the words somehow—feeblest, stupidest words, I’m afraid—to make you know that all the happiness of my life to come depended upon winning you for my wife?”
“I remember as if it were last night,” she answered gravely. “But oh, how long ago it seems!”
“Why do you sigh as you say that?”
“Oh, one always sighs for the past! How can one help feeling sorry that it should be gone—so much of our lives and of ourselves gone for ever?”
“Oh, but when the future is so fair, when the present is so happy, there should be no more sighing. It is an offence against the Great Father of all, who has been so good to us.”
She did not answer, and they remained silent for some minutes, she seated on a bank covered with heather and wild flowers; he stretched on the short, sweet turf at her feet. The heather had not begun to show its purple bloom, but there was the gold of the gorse, and the brightness of innumerable wild flowers around and about them as they basked in the sunshine.
“Dearest, do you believe in dreams?” Disney asked suddenly.
“Sometimes—not much—dreams are often dreadful,” she answered, with a startled air.