“Now, one sweet kiss to give me good luck and bring me back all safe. P-l-e-a-s-e don't refuse it.”
“Oh, Clarence! Mamma don't approve of such things, and I don't either. You are not my husband yet,” she pleaded, but in vain, for he had put his arm around her and was holding her close to his heart.
“I am not your husband yet? Yes I am. In intention I have been ever since January, 1872. More than two years, and, in fact, I shall be in two weeks. So you see how cruel it is to be so distant.”
“Do you call this distant, holding me so close?” For sole answer he looked into her eyes, kissed her forehead and blushing cheeks, then he kissed the heavily fringed eyelids, kept partly closed, afraid to meet the radiant gaze of his expressive eyes. Then he put his lips to hers and held them there in a long kiss of the purest, truest love. “My darling! My wife! My own for ever! The sweetest, loveliest angel of my soul!”
No doubt he would have been willing to hold her thus close to his heart for hours, but she disengaged herself from his embrace with gentle firmness. Such warm caresses she intuitively felt must be improper in the highest degree, even on the eve of marriage. No lady could allow them without surrendering her dignity. That was the effect of Doña Josefa's doctrines, which she had carefully inculcated into the minds of her daughters.
“Well, I hope that at last you have kissed me enough,” said Mercedes, rather resentfully.
“Never enough, but I hope sufficiently to give me good luck,” answered the happy Clarence.
“Oh, Clarence, that reminds me of my horrible dream of last night. I dreamed that papa went to look for you in the midst of a snow storm and never came back. You returned, but he never did.”
“You must not believe in dreams, dearest.”
“I do not, but this seemed prophetic to me.”