“Isn’t it the blessed truth—and don’t you know it is, you darling?—Oh! Miss Biddy, I’m wasting away like a farthing candle in the dog-days—I’m going down to my snug grave through your cruelty. The daisies will be growing over me afore next Easther—Ugh—ugh—ugh. I’ve a murderin’ cough too, and nothing can give me ase but yourself, Miss Biddy,” cried Terence eagerly.
“Hush! they’ll hear you,” said the heiress.
“I don’t care who hears me,” replied Terence desperately; “I can’t stand dying by inches this way. I’ll destroy myself.”
“Oh, Terence!” murmured Miss O’Brannigan.
“Yes,” he continued: “I loaded my pistols this morning, and I told Barney M’Guire, the dog-feeder, to come over and shoot me the first thing he does in the morning.”
“Terence, dear, what do you want? What am I to say?” inquired the trembling girl.
“Say,” cried Terence, who was resolved to clinch the business at a word; “say that you love me.”
The handkerchief was again applied to Miss O’Brannigan’s face, and a faint affirmative issued from the depths of the cambric. Terence’s heart hopped like a racket-ball in his breast.
“Give me your hand upon it,” he whispered.
Miss Biddy placed the envied palm, not on his brows, but in his hand, and was led by him to the top of a set which was forming for a country dance, from whence they started off at the rate of one of our modern steam-engines, to the spirit-stirring tune of “Haste to the Wedding.” There was none of the pirouetting, and chassez-ing, and balancez-ing, of your slip-shod quadrilles in vogue then—it was all life and action: swing corners in a hand gallop, turn your partner in a whirlwind, and down the middle like a flash of lightning.