She repeated a few lines softly:
"Pleasant was the journey homeward,
All the birds sang loud and sweetly
Songs of happiness and heart's-ease;
Sang the blue-bird, the Owaissa:
'Happy are you; Hiawatha,
Having such a wife to love you!'
Sang the robin, the Opechee:
'Happy are you, Minnehaha,
Having such a noble husband!'"
Then Lina's small hand stole softly into her lover's. She raised her dark, passionate eyes to his face, and he read in their starry depths the deathless love that filled her heart.
"Lina, you do love me very much—do you not?" he said, lovingly.
"Ah, I could not tell you how much," she murmured. "If I were a poet like you, Ronald, I might put my tenderness into glowing words. But it is locked deep within my heart. I think if anything happens to part us I should die."
"Nothing can happen to part us, Love," he answered. "To-morrow night at this hour you will belong to me wholly, and then your life shall be all couleur de rose. Nothing can come between us after that magic ring is on your finger. We shall belong to each other, then, in the solemn, beautiful words of the marriage service, 'until death us do part.'"
His happy mood and his loving confidence were infectious.
The girl forgot for awhile the hovering shadow of evil.
She was gay and blithe and happy, looking forward to the morrow with timid, tremulous joy.
"I shall come for you in a carriage to-morrow evening, myself," he said. "Walter Earle has promised to come for mother in his phaeton. Violet will meet us at the church."