"This is the Lime Walk—the prettiest at Powyss Place, to my mind."
This was the young baronet's first commonplace remark. "If you will
ascend the eminence yonder, Miss Darrell, I think I can point out
Catheron Royals; that is, if you think it worth the trouble."
It was all the same to Edith—the Lime Walk, the eminence, or any other quarter of the park. She took Sir Victor's arm, as he seemed to expect it, and went with him slowly up the elevation. Pale, weary, listless, she might be, but how charmingly pretty she looked in the sparkling sunshine, the soft wind blowing back her loose brown hair, kindling into deeper light her velvety-brown eyes, bringing a sea-shell pink into each creamy cheek. Beautiful beyond all ordinary beauty of womanhood, it seemed to Sir Victor Catheron.
"It is a wonderfully pretty place," she said. "I should think you English people, whose ancestors, time out of mind, have lived and died here, would grow to love every ivy-clad stone, every brave old tree. If I were not Alexander I would be Diogenes—if I were not an American girl, I would be an English miss."
She laughed and looked up at him, her spirits rising in the sunshine and the free, fresh air. His eyes were fixed upon her face—passionate admiration, passionate love, written in them far too plainly for any girl on earth not to read. And yet—he had proposed to Trix.
"You would?" he eagerly exclaimed. "Miss Darrell, do I understand you to say you could live in England all your life—give up America and your friends, and pass your life here?"
She shrugged her shoulders.
"It would be no great sacrifice. Apart from my father, there isn't a soul in all wide America I care a farthing for, and your English homes are very charming."
The last barrier broke down. He had not meant to speak—he had meant to be very prudent and formal—to tell Lady Helena first, to refer the matter to Mr. Stuart next. Now all prudence and formality were swept away. Her hands were in his—he was speaking with his whole heart in every word.
"Then stay and share an English home—share mine Edith, I love you—I have loved you, I think, since I saw you first. Will you be my wife?"
Alas for Trix!—that was Edith's first thought. To burst out laughing—that was Edith's first impulse. Not in triumph or exultation—just at this moment she felt neither—but at the awful blunder Trix had made; for Trix had made a blunder, that was clear as day, else Sir Victor Catheron had never said those words.