“I am truly rejoiced to see Lady Maude recovering her spirits again,” he said, his fine eyes lit up with pleasure. “She has been shadowed by the dark cloud of her nameless melancholy long enough.”
“If Lord Villiers only knew how much cause I had for that ‘nameless melancholy,’ he would forgive me any pain it may ever have caused him,” she said, while a shadow of the past fell darkly over her bright young face.
“And may I not know? Dearest Maude, when is this mystery to end? Am I never to be made happy by the possession of this dear hand?”
He took the little, white hand, small and snowy as a lily-leaf, and it was no longer withdrawn, but nestled lovingly in his, as if there it found its rightful home.
“Maude, Maude!” he cried, in a delirium of joy, “is your dark dream, then, in reality over? Oh, Maude, speak, and tell me! Am I to be made happy yet?”
“If you can take me as I am, if you can forgive and forget the past, I am yours, Ernest!” she said, in a thrilling whisper.
In a moment she was in his arms, held to the true heart whose every throb was for her—her head upon the breast that was to pillow hers through life.
“Maude, Maude! My bride, my life, my peerless darling! Oh, Maude, this is too much happiness!” he cried, in a sort of transport between the passionate kisses pressed on her warm, yielding lips.
Blushingly she rose from his embrace, and gently extricated herself from his arms.
“Oh, Maude, my beautiful darling! May Heaven forever bless you for this!” he fervently exclaimed, all aglow with passionate love.