He is conscious of an intense longing that the favour she asks will be to kiss her! He feels at this moment that he would willingly give up everything in the world, his successes of the past, his hopes for the future, his schemes in the present, just for the sake of touching this soft scarlet mouth once,
“To waste his whole soul in one kiss
Upon these perfect lips,”
in fact, but there is an inexplicable sensation of reverence for her that no other woman has ever raised in his breast.
And there is a purity in the face shewing up in the semi-light, that fills him, blasé as he is—satiated as he is, with a wonderment that no woman’s face has ever created in him before.
“I want to go right round the garden.”
The request is so simple, so childish, that it brings him down at once from the height to which imagination has raised him to practical every-day existence, and he laughs aloud at his own sentimental folly.
“But what will they say to our escapade? The garden is a large one, and it is close upon twelve o’clock now. You know how strict Lady Beranger’s notions are regarding the bienséances, and that such a nocturnal excursion will be in her eyes, flagrant. Unless indeed,” and he lowers his voice to the most harmonious key, “you were with a man you were engaged to!”
She does not seem to hear, or else she does not heed, the concluding words of his sentence, a deafness and indifference on her part that rails him considerably.
“If I were Gabrielle, I should answer, au diable with anyone who wants to coerce me, especially when what I wish to do is innocent enough. As it is, those dreadful bogies of my life, convenances and bienséances, must be infringed, the flagrancy of a nocturnal escapade braved, for I will go round the garden, and you, Lord Delaval, you will surely be kind enough to stay here quietly under these lovely trees, until I come. Don’t let any one see you, for Heaven’s sake, that is, not mamma, or she will be suspecting I am flown, goodness knows where! I won’t tax your patience for more than ten minutes I promise.”
So after all she has not proposed a longer promenade for the sake of his society, he thinks angrily. It is simply girlish nonsense that she wishes to indulge in, or—perhaps she wants to have a quiet cry over Carl Conway’s engagement to Crystal Meredyth. This suspicion ices his tone, and alters his manner strangely.