“One moment, if you please,” he pleaded. “There is something that I wish particularly to say to you.”
“Yes?” she said interrogatively, turning her gaze full upon him, with the slightest inflection of surprise in her voice.
Then, all at once, she saw that in his eyes which revealed to her what it was he was about to say to her, and before the clear intense flame of love which glowed in their depths, her own eyes sank abashed and dismayed. To her it came, indeed, as a revelation. For a moment or two all the pulses of her being seemed to stand still. She said to herself, “I am dreaming—presently I shall awake.” Everard took her hand and she did not know it. From her unresisting fingers he withdrew the bouquet and placed it on the basket at her feet. It was only when he began to speak that she came to herself. Between the spot where they were standing and the house a large clump of evergreens intervened. From none of the windows could they be overlooked.
Everard, reading in her face some portion of that which was passing through her mind, gave her a few moments in which to recover herself; before saying more. Then, not without misgivings, he resumed:
“It was more, far more, than merely to congratulate you on your birthday and offer you a few flowers that brought me here to-day. It was to tell you that I love you—that I have loved you in secret for years—it was to ask you to be my wife.”
A faintly-breathed “Oh!” fluttered from Ethel’s lips. She withdrew her fingers from his clasp gently but firmly. Everard’s heart sank still lower, but he went bravely on:
“Many a time before to-day,” he continued, “have I been tempted to speak to you, to tell you what I am telling you now, but it was a temptation to which I would not yield. I was a poor man with no prospects worth speaking of; and I would not seek to entangle you in an engagement which might have to last for years. But, after long waiting, Fortune’s wheel has turned for me, and now——”
He ceased abruptly at the touch of her hand on his sleeve. Her large dark eyes—and at that moment they looked to him larger and darker than they had ever looked before—were gazing into his beseechingly.
“Not a word more—not one, please, Mr. Lisle,” she entreated. “Oh, I am so sorry that you have told me this!”
“Is my telling it you, then, of no avail?” he demanded, a little hoarsely.