"Unreservedly and candidly."
I seized her other hand and held her firmly. "About fifty minutes."
She laughed, rather joyously I thought. "And having loved me for fully fifty minutes, you wish to make me your wife? Confiding man!"
"Little girl," I said tenderly, "let us be serious. If my dull consciousness did not awaken till an hour ago, my heart tells me that I have loved you ever since I first saw you standing near this spot. I am not going to ask you now whether you love me, or ever can learn to love me. It is happiness enough for me to-day to know how much I love you, and to know that I have told you of that love. I do not care to have my dream too rudely and too suddenly dispelled. Very probably you do not care for me as I should like to have you care for me, but do not make a jest of my affection. I am wholly aware of the preposterousness of my demands in many respects"—this sounded very conventional and commonplace, but every lover must say it—"and, believe me, I shudder when I think of what I have dared confess."
Then she said with the most delightful demureness: "Mr. Stanhope, is it likely that a girl would sit in a burying-ground on a bench with a gentleman, allowing him to hold both her hands, unless she cared for him a little—just a little?"
Up to this moment I had fairly forgotten that I was depriving her of all power of resistance, but with such encouragement I took an even more sympathetic grasp and sat a trifle closer, while the minutes ticked away. A robin flew down from the tree near by and saucily hopped toward us, until at a rebuking call from his mate he flew away, and I fancied that I could hear them talking over the situation, and drawing conclusions from their own happiness. Phyllis was the first to break the charming spell.
"Mr. Stanhope," she asked, hardly above a whisper, "what did Aunt Mary say when you told her that you wished to make me your wife?"
"She said, Phyllis, that Providence may have decreed that I am the man to bring you happiness."
And still in that same enchanting whisper, with her face a little rosier, as she half hid it below my shoulder: "Mr. Stanhope, do you think that a girl with my Christian training could fly in the face of Providence?"