"No-o-o, I think not," faltered Miss Stuart.
"And when I address myself to your father and mother—as I shall very soon—you think, Miss Stuart, they will also favor my suit?"
"They favor his suit?" thought Trix, "good Heaven above! was ever earthly modesty like this young man's?" But aloud, still in the trembling tones befitting the occasion, "I—think so—I know so, Sir Victor. It will be only too much honor, I'm sure."
"And—oh, Miss Stuart—Beatrix—if you will allow me to call you so—you think that when I speak—when I ask—I will be accepted?"
"He's a fool!" thought Beatrix, with an inward burst. "A bashful, ridiculous fool! Why, in the name of all that's namby-pamby, doesn't he pop the question, like a man, and have done with it? Bashfulness is all very well—nobody likes a little of it better than I do; but there is no use running it into the ground."
"You are silent," pursued Sir Victor. "Miss Stuart, it is not possible that I am too late, that there is a previous engagement?"
Miss Stuart straightened herself up, lifted her head, and smiled. She smiled in a way that would have driven a lover straight out of his senses.
"Call me Beatrix, Sir Victor; I like it best from my friends—from—from you. No, there is no previous engagement, and" (archly, this) "I am quite sure Sir Victor Catheron need never fear a refusal."
"Thanks." And precisely as another young gentleman was doing in the shadow of the "Torc," Sir Victor did in the shadow of the "Eagle's Nest." He lifted his fair companion's hand to his lips, and kissed it.
After that of course there was silence. Trixy's heart was full of joy—pure, unadulterated joy, to bursting. Oh, to be out of this, and able to tell pa and ma, and Charley, and Edith, and everybody! Lady Catheron! "Beatrix—Lady Catheron!" No—I can't describe Trixy's feelings. There are some joys too intense and too sacred for the Queen's English. She shut her eyes and drifted along in that blessed little boat in a speechless, ecstatic trance.