“I not know what love is! And I have been saying things I should have laughed at any fellow for saying, though I am fit to cry while I say them. Oh, how cold–blooded you are; for I cannot make you feel them”!
He looked at her so ardently, that her sweet gaze fell like a violet in the May sun.
“No, Mr. Clayton Nowell, I am not cold–blooded; but, at least, my blood is pure, though not in the eyes of the world so high and refined as your own”.
“What has that got to do with it? My own—own—own—— ” He was in a great hurry to embrace her, because she looked at him tenderly, to palliate the toss of her head.
“Wait, if you please. Throughout all your rhapsody” (here she smiled so that none could be angry) “you have not said a single word to show whether—that is—I mean to say whether—— ”
She burst into tears, turned from him, and clung to the dead arm of the old oak.
“Whether what”? asked Clayton, sharply, in spite of her deep distress; for he began to doubt if he truly were loved, and to tire of the highstrung suspense. “Whether I have got money enough to support us both respectably? Isnʼt that the proper word for it? And because I am the younger son”?
He frowned very hard at the bark of the oak, and crushed the grey touchwood under his foot, though his hand was still seeking for hers. Then she turned full upon him suddenly, too proud to dissemble her tears.
“Oh, Clayton, Clayton Nowell, can you think me so mean as that? Though my father would cast me off, perhaps, in his gratitude to Sir Cradock, do you think I would care for all the world, so long as I only had you? What I meant was only that you never said if you meant me to be—to be—your wife”. Her long lashes fell on her glistening cheeks, like the willow–leaves over the Avon.