“If I do not, may I never kiss again, you severe Elfride! You know I think more of you than I can tell; that you are my queen. I would die for you, Elfride!”
A rapid red again filled her cheeks, and she looked at him meditatively. What a proud moment it was for Elfride then! She was ruling a heart with absolute despotism for the first time in her life.
Stephen stealthily pounced upon her hand.
“No; I won’t, I won’t!” she said intractably; “and you shouldn’t take me by surprise.”
There ensued a mild form of tussle for absolute possession of the much-coveted hand, in which the boisterousness of boy and girl was far more prominent than the dignity of man and woman. Then Pansy became restless. Elfride recovered her position and remembered herself.
“You make me behave in not a nice way at all!” she exclaimed, in a tone neither of pleasure nor anger, but partaking of both. “I ought not to have allowed such a romp! We are too old now for that sort of thing.”
“I hope you don’t think me too—too much of a creeping-round sort of man,” said he in a penitent tone, conscious that he too had lost a little dignity by the proceeding.
“You are too familiar; and I can’t have it! Considering the shortness of the time we have known each other, Mr. Smith, you take too much upon you. You think I am a country girl, and it doesn’t matter how you behave to me!”
“I assure you, Miss Swancourt, that I had no idea of freak in my mind. I wanted to imprint a sweet—serious kiss upon your hand; and that’s all.”
“Now, that’s creeping round again! And you mustn’t look into my eyes so,” she said, shaking her head at him, and trotting on a few paces in advance. Thus she led the way out of the lane and across some fields in the direction of the cliffs. At the boundary of the fields nearest the sea she expressed a wish to dismount. The horse was tied to a post, and they both followed an irregular path, which ultimately terminated upon a flat ledge passing round the face of the huge blue-black rock at a height about midway between the sea and the topmost verge. There, far beneath and before them, lay the everlasting stretch of ocean; there, upon detached rocks, were the white screaming gulls, seeming ever intending to settle, and yet always passing on. Right and left ranked the toothed and zigzag line of storm-torn heights, forming the series which culminated in the one beneath their feet.