‘Oh, they! they don’t care. It will be one out of the way. Ah, Cara, if I only could think you would be sorry.’
‘Of course I shall be sorry, Roger,’ she said, with gentle seriousness. ‘There is no one I shall miss so much. I will think of you often in the woods, and when there are garden parties. As you are going, I am almost glad not to be there this year.’
‘Ah, Cara! if you would but say a little more, how happy you might make me,’ said the young man, self-deceived, with honest moisture in his eyes.
‘Then I will say as much more as you like,’ she said, bending forward towards him with a little soft colour rising in her cheeks. ‘I shall think of you always on Sundays, and how glad we used to be when you came; and if you have time to write to me, I will always answer; and I will think of you at that prayer in the Litany for those who travel by land and water.’
‘Something more yet—only one thing more!’ cried poor Roger, getting down upon one knee somehow, and laying his hand on the arm of her chair. His eyes were quite full, his young face glowing: ‘Say you love me ever so little, Cara! I have never thought of anyone in my life but you. Whenever I hoped or planned anything it was always for you. I never had a penny: I never could show what I felt, anyhow: but now I shall be well enough off, and able to keep——’
‘Hush!’ said Cara, half frightened; ‘don’t look so anxious. I never knew you so restless before; one moment starting up and walking about, another down on your knees. Why should you go down on your knees to me? Of course I like you, Roger dear; have we not been like brother and sister?’
‘No!’ he said; ‘and I don’t want to be like brother and sister. I am so fond of you, I don’t know what to say. Oh, Cara! don’t be so quiet as if it didn’t matter. I shall be well off, able to keep a wife.’
‘A wife?—that is a new idea,’ she said, bewildered; ‘but you are too young, Roger.’
‘Will you come with me, Cara?’ he cried, passing over, scarcely hearing, in his emotion, the surprise yet indifference of this question. ‘Oh, Cara! don’t say no without thinking! I will wait if you like—say a year or two years. I shall not mind. I would rather wait fifty years for you than have anyone else, Cara. Only say you will come with me, or even to me, and I shall not mind.’
Cara sat quite upright in her chair. She threw her white shawl off in her excitement. ‘Me?’ she said; ‘me?’ (That fine point of grammar often settles itself summarily in excitement, and on the wrong side.) ‘You must be dreaming,’ she said; ‘or am I dreaming, or what has happened? I don’t know what you mean.’