After their first meeting was over, and Beauchamp had explained that his sister would be there in about an hour, of course all three, as they took a step or two slowly forward, felt themselves rather awkward. But William Delaware was fond of cutting Gordian knots; and the next moment, after a silent smile, as he glanced first at his cousin and then at Blanche, he abruptly let her arm slip from his own, and, looking gayly into Beauchamp's face, he said, "Here, Henry, give Blanche your arm, while I go to tell my father that you are here."
His sister looked at him almost reproachfully, and proposed that they should all return; but Captain Delaware stayed not to listen, and the next moment she stood alone with Henry Beauchamp, with her trembling hand laid upon her lover's arm. Heaven knows what they said, for I am sure I do not; but doubtless it was something very extraordinary, for ere they had taken two steps forward, Beauchamp woke, and detected Blanche Delaware calling him "My lord."
"My lord!" he repeated. "My lord! Is such the cold title by which I am alone to be called! Oh, Blanche!"
Blanche found that she had got into a scrape; and as there was but one way of getting out of it in all the world, she took it at once. She paused, and though she was ready to sink where she stood, she raised her long eyelashes and fixed her beautiful eyes upon her cousin's face for one single moment, with a glance that was worth all the Oriental love-letters that ever were composed--imploring, tender, full of gentleness and affection. It seemed to say, "Do not--do not overpower me--I am yours, heart, and soul, and mind--but my heart is so full, another word will break it."
Beauchamp read it all at once; and pressing her hand in both of his, he asked the very intelligible question, "Is it--is it mine, dear Blanche!"
"If you still wish it, Henry," she replied. "Can I refuse any thing to the saviour of my brother's character, and the generous benefactor of our whole family?"
The spirit of perversity seized upon Beauchamp again in a moment; and he was not satisfied. "Nay, Blanche!--nay!" he said; "I must win a dearer assurance than that. I will not owe to gratitude--little as I have deserved it--what I would fain owe to love. No, no; I must have a dearer assurance, or I shall think that the same Blanche Delaware who accepts Henry Beauchamp in France, would again refuse Henry Burrel if--unbacked by some pitiful service--he again stood by the Prior's Fountain."
Beauchamp's exacting mood gave Blanche the advantage; and by amusing her fancy even for a single instant, got the better of a part of her agitation. She smiled, and was half inclined to triumph, for she felt that she could if she liked; but love was the more powerful motive, and she only misused her advantage by that one playful smile, and a few words like it. "I no more refused him then," she replied, "because he was Henry Burrel, than I now accept him because he is Earl of Ashborough. Do you believe me, Henry?" she asked, after a pause.
"I do, indeed, dear Blanche," replied Beauchamp. "But you are smiling at me still; and indeed--indeed, if you could tell all the agony, and long, long days of misery which that rejection caused me, I am sure you would pity the feelings that your words produced."
"I did from the first, Henry! I did from the first!" replied Blanche, earnestly; "but you must believe me, Henry, when I tell you, that I suffered double what you did. Yes, yes!" she added, seeing him shake his head--"Yes, yes, I did; for I was crushing my own heart at the very time I was _obliged_ to crush that of him--of him--Oh, Henry, you do not know what I felt!"