“Yes, I love you,” she replied; and her voice was some soul-voice, quite different from her usual high-pitched tones. “I have loved you for a long time,” she added; and then, suddenly, with the old every-day ring: “There, I had made up my mind not to tell you that before our golden wedding. Papotier says a girl should never tell it at all, because the confession is ill-advised; and mamma says she certainly shouldn’t, because the feeling, if there, was a thing to be ashamed of.”
“Ashamed of love? But, my dearest?”
“No, I should never be ashamed of loving any one. Not even a footman.”
“Thank you,” sotto voce, from Gerard.
“We must bear the consequences of our virtues. I can’t understand any one’s being ashamed of ‘love.’ Can you?”
“I can’t understand any man’s keeping quiet his love for you. I want to shout out mine on the house-tops! Now that Ursula knows—I mean Juffrouw Rovers—why not proclaim the engagement to-night?”
“And your mother?”
So they whiled away the time on the veranda, looking down into the garden, where a large marquee had been put up for the dancers, with a music-tent and strings of Chinese lanterns. Meanwhile the Baroness lay back dozing in little audible gasps, and Ursula sat looking at photographs of Italy with Mademoiselle Papotier, who had forgotten all the names.
“Yes, that is Pavia,” said Mademoiselle Papotier. “Or perhaps it’s Pisa. I think it must be Pisa, because of the crooked tower.”
“Oh, that’s only the photograph,” replied Ursula, listlessly; “the angle’s wrong.”