“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.
Terence had never acquitted himself so well; he cut, capered, and set to his partner with unusual agility; we naturally participated in the admiration he excited, and in the fullness of our triumph, while brushing past the flimsy nankeens worn by Tibbins, I could not refrain from bestowing a smart kick upon his shins, that brought the tears to his eyes with pain and vexation.