A moment’s stillness.
He rose up and took Flora’s hand. He placed it in Hal’s, and with a voice whose tones became rich from depth of feeling, he said—
“Take her, Mr. Vivian; you are the choice of her young heart, as she is of yours; your future happiness is in the keeping of both. Be you faithful to the trust now reposed in you; be you true to the love you now bear her. You have won her, now wear her as the richest jewel heaven and fortune can bestow upon you. Be gentle to her and tender with her, for she is a flower that will droop and perish under a cold aspect; and be sure that, for all the loving tenderness you may plant around her coming life, you will reap an abundant harvest of pure, enduring, devoted affection.”
“Oh! that I were worthy of this treasure, so great, so sacred, now entrusted to my keeping,” ejaculated Hal, in a quivering, ardent voice, as he drew Flora to his breast. “Have only faith in me. I would die rather than be the occasion of one sad thought to her.”
“Amen!” responded Nathan Gomer. “Understand me, young Mr. Vivian, though I help to hand over this treasure to you, I do not resign my self-constituted guardianship. Oh, but I shall be a very dragon of watchfulness still.”
A merry laugh followed this sally.
Then everybody seemed to know what was coming next.
Mr. Wilton’s face grew serious and its muscles set; he had made one sacrifice—somehow he continued to think so. He felt really that he ought to be excused from making another—certainly they were not small ones.
However, Nathan Gomer set boldly to work, and introduced the subject by addressing Mark.
“Pray, sir, having been a witness to your sister’s happiness in catching a husband, have you no yearnings to take unto yourself a wife?”