She held it out to him with a smile, supremely careless and uplifted. He caught it passionately, his blue eyes afire, and covered it with kisses.
"Not for ten thousand worlds! O Edith, how lightly you talk of parting, of giving me up. Am I then so utterly indifferent to you? No; I will never resign you; to call you wife is the one hope of my life. My darling, if you knew how I love you, how empty and worthless the whole world seems without you! But one day you will, you must—one day you will be able no more to live without me than I without you. Don't talk like this any more, Edith; if you knew how it hurts me you would be more merciful, I am sure. Life can hold nothing half so bitter for me as the loss of you."
She listened in a sort of wonder at his impassioned earnestness, looking at him shyly, wistfully.
"You love me like this?" she said.
"A hundred times more than this. I would die for you, Edith. How empty and theatrical it sounds, but, Heaven knows, I would."
She passed her hand through his arm and clasped the other round it, her bright smile back.
"Don't die," she said, with that smile, and her own rare, lovely blush; "do better—live for me. Ah, Sir Victor, I don't think it will be such a very hard thing to learn to like you!"
"My darling! And you will talk no more of parting—no more of giving me up? You don't really wish it, Edith, do you?"
"Most certainly not. Would I have accepted you, if I did? I'll never give you up while you care for me like this. If we ever part, the parting shall be your doing, not mine."
"My doing—mine?" he laughed aloud in his incredulity and happiness. "The days of miracles are over, belle amie, but a summer breeze could more easily uproot these oaks than that. And lest you should think yourself fetterless and free, I will bind you at once." He drew from his pocket a tiny morocco box. "See this ring, Edith: it has been worn by women of our house for the past two centuries—the betrothal ring of the Catherons. Let me place it on your finger, never to be taken off until I bind you with a golden circlet stronger still."