"Why should it be good fortune to be chosen by me," she said, "when I am myself the most unfortunate of beings? The poor flowers that I choose," she added with a faint effort to laugh, fearful she had said too much, "will be the first to fade away," quoting Moore's little song.
"Or the young gazelle, with its soft black eye,
If it loved you well would be sure to die,"
proceeded Alfred, humming the air and continuing the quotation; then in a half playful, half tender whisper, he subjoined, "The death-warrant of many of whom your ladyship little thinks would be already signed and sealed were this the case." But perceiving while he spoke that though Caroline tried to smile her lip trembled, he checked himself, and with an altered tone exclaimed, "I beg a thousand pardons! You are—you seem—what can have—"
"Oh, nothing," she replied, "only other young people are light-hearted and cheerful together; there are your sisters for instance, how happy they always seem to be; and how kind to you all—how indulgent, how affectionate, Lady Arden appears. While I have neither sister, nor brother, and yet my mother"—here checking herself, she added hesitatingly, "I dare say—it must be my own fault—I suppose I don't deserve to be loved—but I am quite sure that—that—my mother does not love me—and oh, if you knew how miserable the thought makes me!"
"You cannot be serious," he said.
"I am indeed!" she replied, looking up with innocent earnestness, while her eyes swam in tears.
Alfred caught her hand, pressed it to his lips, talked incoherently about the impossibility of knowing without loving her, then of his own unworthiness, his presumption, his poverty, his insignificance, &c. &c.; his being in short a younger son; and at length wound up all by making, notwithstanding, a passionate declaration of his love. If affection the most devoted, the most unalterable, had any value in her eyes, affection that would study her every wish, affection such as he was convinced no lover had ever felt before; if such affection could in any degree compensate for the absence of every other pretension, such, unable longer to suppress his feeling, he now ventured to lay at her feet.
Caroline trembled and remained silent. He entreated her to speak, to relieve him from the fear that he had offended her past forgiveness by the very mention of his perhaps too daring suit.
"Does—my mother—know?" she whispered at last, "because—if not—I fear—"
"Lady Palliser I think," he replied, "must know, must understand; nay, I have ventured to allude slightly to the subject, and have even been presumptuous enough to translate her ladyship's kindly and indulgent admission of my constant visits as, however liberal on her part, a tacit consent to my addresses."