"Yes,—I mean I never get on with them quite as well as other fellows do somehow—and—er—and—what I want to say, Miss Mary, is that I've never got on with any woman so well as I have with you—and——"
He paused. At no time in his life had he been at such a loss for language. His heart was thumping in the most extraordinary fashion, and he prodded the end of his walking-stick into the ground with quite a ferocious earnestness. She was still looking at him and still smiling.
"And," he went on ramblingly, "that's why I hope we shall always be good friends."
As he uttered this perfectly commonplace remark, he cursed himself for a fool. "What's the matter with me?" he inwardly demanded. "My tongue seems to be tied up!—or I'm going to have lockjaw! It's awful! Something better than this has got to come out of me somehow!" And acting on a brilliant flash of inspiration which suddenly seemed to have illumined his brain, he said—
"The fact is, I want to get married. I'm thinking about it."
How quiet she was! She seemed scarcely to breathe.
"Yes?" and the word, accentuated without surprise and merely as a question, was spoken very gently. "I do hope you have found some one who loves you with all her heart!"
She turned her head away, and Angus saw, or thought he saw, the bright tears brim up from under her lashes and slowly fall. Without another instant's pause he rushed upon his destiny, and in that rush grew strong.
"Yes, Mary!" he said, and moving to her side he caught her hand in his own—"I dare to think I have found that some one! I believe I have! I believe that a woman whom I love with all my heart, loves me in return! If I am mistaken, then I've lost the whole world! Tell me, Mary! Am I wrong?"
She could not speak,—the tears were thick in her eyes.