The strains of the Estudiantina Waltz are still floating on the still air. The moon has hidden her face behind a bank of greyish cloud, and already the first pink tinge of dawn peeps down on earth.
“Tell me what you felt?” he says, forgetful of time, of the convenances, of Lady Beranger’s wrath, and clasping her nearer, he tenderly draws the long dark cloak closer round her slender throat.
“In the first moment I saw you, Carl, it seemed to me as if God had chosen me out for such delicious—delicious happiness as no other girl ever had in the world. I loved you in that moment as much as I love you now, Carl! And that is—oh! how can I tell you? I don’t believe that was the beginning of my love, for it was so great, and full, and perfect, that it must have been growing a long, long time. I love you!—I love you! I could say it every hour of my life, until you tired of hearing me. But you will never, never tire of hearing me say it, Carl, will you?” she asks wistfully.
Carlton Conway laughs as he listens, but it is scarcely a laugh that denotes mirth. Eight-and-twenty—he has never found a true woman yet to his thinking, until this one came and sat down in blind adoration at his feet, and gave all her pure and loving heart and soul into his keeping—unreservedly—unquestioningly—and brought a sense of happiness with her which he had never pictured even in his dreams.
Tired of hearing that she loves him! When her love is the one thing in all the world to him. It is these words of hers that make him laugh. They seem so strange and absurd, when he knows that his whole being is full of her. So he answers her by wrapping his arms round her, and pressing fond, fervent kisses on her brow and lids and sweet tempting lips—the lips that are his, and that no other man has touched like this. He has culled their perfume and fragrance, and as he feels this to be true, each kiss that he gives and takes seems to be a link in the chain of love that binds them together.
“When do your people leave town, Zai?” he asks her, “and for how long?”
“The day after to-morrow, Carl,” she answers, stifling back a sob, for Hampshire seems to be the world’s end from London, “but we shall be back in a week.”
“And who has Lady Beranger invited down to Sandilands?”
“Mr. Hamilton and Lord Delaval.”
Carlton Conway grinds his heel into the ground with impotent rage.