A glimmer of a smile came to her face, and she raised the blunderbuss, pointing it full at my breast. The mouth was still the width of a water-jug, and in the fair inexperienced hands of Lady Mary it was like to go off at any moment and blow a hole in me as big as a platter.
"Charming mistress," said I, "shoot!"
For answer she suddenly flung the weapon to the grass, and, burying her face in her hands, began to weep. "I'm afraid it's l-l-loaded," she sobbed out.
In an instant I was upon my knees at her side and had taken her hand. Her fingers resisted little, but she turned away her head.
"Lady Mary," said I softly, "I'm a poor devil of an Irish adventurer, but—I love you! I love you so that if I was dead you could bid me rise! I am a worthless fellow; I have no money, and my estate you can hardly see for the mortgages and trouble upon it; I am no fine suitor, but I love you more than them all; I do, upon my life!"
"Here approaches Strammers in quest of his blunderbuss," she answered calmly. "Perhaps we had better give it to him."
I sprang to my feet, and, sure enough, the thick-headed ninepin of a gardener was nearing us.
"Don't ye trust 'im, your la'ship!" he cried. "I caught 'im in a tree, I did, and he be a bad lot!"
Lady Mary quelled him, and he at once went away with his blunderbuss, still muttering his many doubts. But still one cannot drop a love declaration and pick it up again with the facility of a tailor resuming his work on a waistcoat. One can't say: "Where was I? How far had I gone before this miserable interruption came?" In a word I found mysef stammering and stuttering and wasting moments too precious for words.
"Lady Mary—" I began. "Lady Mary—I love you, Lady Mary! Lady Mary—"