“While what, Virgie?” her lover asked, as she stopped in confusion.
“While I was not sure but that I was nourishing a delusion; and, taking it all in all, I was very wretched.”
“Ah! and you have been loving me all this time?” Rupert breathed, as he bent to kiss the lips that had confessed so much. “And I have been fearing that you might send me away hopeless.”
“I could not send you away, Rupert.”
“Oh, Virgie, I hope I shall not wake to find this all a dream,” he breathed, as he folded her closer in his arms, and drew her head upon his breast.
“Do not fear,” the young girl returned, looking archly up into his eyes. “I assure you I have ample evidence that you are very much awake now, and, if you please, it won’t do to disarrange my hair too much, for Grace Huntington is coming back in an hour to help me plan for Lady Dunforth’s ball that is to occur next week.”
Rupert laughed, but released her, smoothing very tenderly the tresses that he had disarranged; then seating himself on the sofa beside her, he asked:
“How will it be, my Virgie—can you be content to remain in England, or are you such a stanch American that you will pine for your native land?”
“It is said that ‘home is where the heart is,’ and if you are to live in England, I am afraid that America would not seem very home-like to me, even though it was my birthplace,” Virgie confessed, with a shy smile that was very bewildering.
“Then you will not mind becoming an English matron?” Rupert observed, with a caress that again endangered the glossy tresses.