It sounds very inadequate, but the fact remains that this entire want of vocabulary in the usually self-possessed and ready Wynifred was the highest possible charm in the eyes of her lover. To his unutterable delight, he found that his very loftiest dream was realised. He himself was the great want of the girl's life. He comforted her. She was able at once to let go the burden of care and sorrow she had borne so long, and to rest herself utterly in his love. The expression on her white face was that of perfect rest. Her soul had found its true goal. Claud and she were in the centre of the labyrinth at last. Above them on the hillside stood the grey farm, still and lonely in the sunlight as it had stood for more than three centuries. Never had it looked on purer happiness than that of these two obscure and poorly-endowed mortals who yet felt themselves rich indeed in the consciousness of mutual sympathy.
The air was musical with streams, the stir of spring mixed subtly with their joy. This betrothal needed no pomp of circumstance to enhance its perfection. To Claud and Wynifred to be together was to be blessed.
CHAPTER XLIX.
To marriage all the stories flow
And finish there.
The Letter L.
It was sunset when at last they rose from the fallen log. To Wynifred it was as though every cloud of trouble had melted away out of her sky. Grief was grief no longer when shared with Claud. His sympathy was so perfect and so tender. It seemed to both of them as if their betrothal were no new thing, as if, in some prior state of being, they had been, as he expressed it, made to fit each other.
"Vaguely, I believe I always felt it," he said. "I was always at ease with you. You suited me. I felt you understood me; at times it almost seemed as if you must be thinking with my brain, so wonderfully similar were the workings of our minds. Wyn, we can never be unhappy, you and I, whatever our lot. We are independent of fate so long as we have each other. I wonder how many engaged couples arrive deliberately at that conclusion?"
"I did not think you would ever arrive at it," said Wyn, smiling. "I thought you were a Sybarite, Claud."