“Oh, no, no!” she said. “How can you be solitary when you have been so honoured?”
“Grace, do you know that I love you, that I have loved you all the time, ever since I first knew you?”
Again she whispered, “Oh, no, no!” scarcely knowing what she said. But Arthur had put his arm around her, and could feel the beating of her heart. “Oh, my darling,” he said, “is it possible that you can care for me? I had not dared to hope it! Is it really true that we may begin the year together—together?”
The first stroke of the Darentdale church clock struck through the silence of the night. Arthur drew the trembling girl more closely to him, and held her fast while the slow bell sounded twelve times. She tried to be perfectly still, and not even sigh forth the gladness that was almost breaking her heart; but when the clock ceased, and the bells pealed out, she lifted her eyes to his face for a moment, and he stooped and kissed her.
Then they remembered their friends, but no one seemed to have observed them. The old formula, “A Happy New Year!” was on the lips of all; but before it could be uttered some one began to sing the opening words of the Te Deum, and everybody sang with a full heart: “We praise Thee, O God; we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord. All the earth doth worship Thee, the Father everlasting.” Then dark forms were seen coming quietly towards them; and presently Dallington said to Knight, “They are the people from the village; they have come over the hill to wish you a Happy New Year. Ah! the thousands who would like to do the same thing! How well they sing!” And indeed they did sing, joining in the anthem, as if every one was contrasting the joy of this New Year with the sorrows of past days, and feeling such joy and thankfulness as could only be expressed in praise to the Great Father. And that old grand psalm of the ages, sung in many an august scene, never thrilled with fuller meaning than now, when the stars looked down upon the singers, and the very air of the night seemed alive with human emotion. So the anthem swelled to its close—“O Lord, in Thee have I trusted; let me never be confounded!”
THE END.
LONDON:
W. SPEAIGHT AND SONS, PRINTERS,
FETTER LANE.