Concerning Elsa's heiress-ship he was not half so well-informed as Claud Cranmer. But indeed the question of ways and means only floated lightly on the top of the deep waves of feeling that filled his soul. His Elaine seemed to him a creature from another sphere—isolated, innocent, and wilful as the Maid of Astolat herself. Probably few young men in the modern Babylon could have brought her such an unspent, single-hearted, ideal devotion; his love was hardly that of the nineteenth century.
The only difficulty he experienced, in walking at her side, was to check himself, to so curb his passion as to be able to talk lightly to her; and, even through his most ordinary remarks, there ran a vibration, a thrill of feeling, "the echo in him broke upon the words that he was speaking," and perhaps communicated itself to the mood of the uncomprehending girl.
"Now," he said, as after several minutes' silence they seated themselves at last, sheltered from sun and breeze, under the shadow of a chalk cliff. "Now at last I claim your promise."
"My promise?"
"Yes, you know what I asked you when we met to-day. You were looking like Huldy in the American poem,
'All kind o' smily round the lips,
An' teary round the lashes.'
You said that when we were alone you'd tell me why. What was it?"
A flash of sudden, angry resentment crossed the girl's fair face, and tears again welled up to the edges of her limpid eyes. Osmond thought he had never seen anything so lovely as her expression and attitude. If one could but paint the quick, panting heave of a white throat, the quiver of a sad, impetuous mouth.
"You can guess—it was the usual thing—Godfrey," she said, struggling to command her voice, but in vain. She could say no more, but turned her face away from him, swallowing tears.
Osmond felt a sudden movement of helpless indignation, which almost carried him away. He mentally applied the brake before he could answer rationally.