She was only serious for a moment, and then her natural gaiety prevailed.
"Do you know that my aunt lectured me severely when I confessed to having refused your flattering offer?"
"Did she really? How sweet of her! After that, you cannot refuse me again. Your aunt would shut you up and feed you upon bread and water, as fathers and mothers used to do with rebellious daughters in the eighteenth century."
"I hardly think she would treat me quite so ferociously for saying 'No;' but I think she would be pleased if I were to say 'Yes.'"
"And that means yes, my love, my own!" he cried, in a rapture so swift and sudden that he had clasped her to his breast and snatched the kiss of betrothal before she could check his impulsiveness. "You are my very own," he said, "and I am the happiest man in England. Yes, the happiest——Did I say in England? What a contemptible notion! I cannot conceive the idea that anywhere upon this earth there beats a human heart so full of gladness as mine. Suzette, Suzette, Suzette!" he repeated tenderly, with a kiss for each comma.
"What a whirlwind you are!" she remonstrated. "And what a rag you are making of my frock! Oh, Allan, how you have hurried me into this! And even now I am not quite sure——"
"You are sure that I adore you! What more need my wife be sure of? Oh, my darling, I have seen wedlock where no love is—only affection and trustfulness and kindly feeling—all the domestic virtues with love left out! Dearest, such a union is like a picture to the colour-blind, like music to the stone-deaf, like a landscape without sunlight. There is nothing in this world like love, and nothing can make up for love when love is wanting."
"And nothing can make up for love when love is wanting," repeated Suzette, suddenly serious. "Oh, Allan! what if I am not sure?—if I doubt my own feelings?"
"But you can't doubt. My dearest, I am reading the signs and tokens of love in those eloquent eyes, in those sensitive lips, while you are talking of doubt. There is no one else, is there, Suzette?" he asked, with quick earnestness. "No one in the past whose image comes between you and me?"
"No one, no one."