Arrived about midway in the long dark walk, Henry at length paused. What with agitation and the quickness of his pace, he seemed himself exhausted, while Louisa, faint with alarm and fatigue, was no longer able to stand unassisted, much less to walk. There was no seat near, he was obliged to support her by an arm round her waist. She leaned her head on his shoulder and sobbed hysterically. His resentment now gave way to tenderness. Her alarm could only be for his safety—the thought soothed his chafed spirit—he whispered the fondest expressions of endearment mingled with incoherent apologies for his violence. He ascribed all his faults, as he had done on the evening before, to love and jealousy. When the bare possibility, he said, of loosing her but crossed his imagination, he was no longer an accountable being—he should be ranked with the veriest madman in bedlam! She only sighed in reply, but it was a sigh from which no lover could fail to derive encouragement, nor did it falsely report what was passing in the bosom whence it came. The ardour of Henry's manner, assisted by her late fears for his safety, had driven all prudential considerations from her thoughts, reduced the vanities of wealth to a mere puppet-show, and for the moment at least made all the bliss of earth seem concentrated in the enthusiastic devotion and actual presence of such a lover. Encouraged by the tremulous tenderness of her sigh, and the gentle quiescence of her manner, Henry ventured to whisper that his leading her from the frequented walk was not altogether accidental, but that driven to distraction by alternate hopes and fears, he had that evening determined at all hazards to make one desperate effort to secure a happiness that it was intoxication even to think of, and would be phrensy to lose—that he had consequently taken the daring step of having a carriage in waiting, which was now not many yards distant. He then entreated her with all the eloquence of wildly excited passion, instead of resenting his audacity to end the cruel doubts which had thus stung him to madness, and fly with him at once.
"I must not, Henry!" she exclaimed, "indeed I must not—I must not," she repeated. But in fluttering broken accents of tenderness and joy, so encouraging, that the arm which was still round her waist, continued the while with a gentle violence propelling her forward; and so light, so willing, though tremulous were her steps, that the tiny white sattin slippers, twinkling like little stars, scarcely touched the earth.
"Oh! Henry, dear Henry, my mother will be so grieved—my brothers will be so angry! Let us go back—and I will promise you to—to—." But she faltered.
"Never, Louisa, will I trust you out of my sight again, till by the sacred name of wife you are mine for ever!"
The passionate tone of voice in which this was uttered sank into whispers of tenderness. Louisa attempted no reply, but all her remaining scruples vanished, and recklessness of consequences came over her: the whole of life seemed comprised in the present moment—the whole world seemed to contain but herself and her lover. A chariot and four was now visible outside a gateway which they were approaching. They glided through the portals, and Louisa suffered Henry to assist her into the carriage. He sprang in after her—the door was closed—"All right," said Henry's man, though begging his pardon it was all very wrong, and off set the horses at their full speed.
It was some weeks before Louisa remembered the gifts of fortune she had resigned, or Henry thought with painful misgivings of the meditated abandonment of him and his love, which he had so strongly suspected before he had been driven to take the violent step we have just described.
What will Tommy Moor say to this, after having declared that sweetbriar is the safest fence for the "Garden of Beauty;" nay, that there is more security in it than in the guardianship of that unamiable duenna, the "Dragon of Prudery, placed within call."
Now, every one knows that the Cheltenham walks are hedged with sweetbriar. Perhaps Louisa Arden, not being a daughter of the Emerald Isle, may account for "that wild sweetbriary fence" which the poet has pronounced their characteristic barrier, not proving effectual in her case. But to return to our ball.
"I wonder which room Miss Louisa is in," said Sir James to Lady Arden; "I have been looking in all the rooms for her, and I can't find her."
"I hope she is not gone into that foolish lit-up walk," replied her ladyship, looking rather anxiously towards the window. "I am afraid it will give all the young people cold."