"Not in the least, child, why should I?" she put in, somewhat playfully. "Come Robert! come Louis!" she added, as she descended the steps leading to the gate. "We are not over early. I hope you won't be lonesome, Amey," she said, turning back, with one hand on the open gate.
"Not she," Mr. Nyle broke in, with mischief in his tone, "she'll keep herself busy with such pleasant thoughts that she will never miss us—go on."
He held the gate open until Cousin Bessie and Louis had passed out. I was standing on the topmost step waiting to see them off, and Mr. Nyle, looking at me to attract my attention, struck an attitude exactly like that in which they had surprised Dr. Campbell, leaning just as languidly upon the bars.
"How silver-sweet sound lovers tongues by night,
Like softest music to attending ears!"
He exclaimed, in such a ridiculously sentimental tone, that we all laughed outright, and cousin Bessie pulling him forcibly away by the coat-sleeve, looked over his shoulder at me and said consolingly:
"Never mind, Amey, he can't throw stones from a glass house, he did this kind of thing many a time in his own day—you know you did," she added, linking her arm within his, and turning her eyes upon his beaming face with a dash of revived tenderness and old love. I caught his answering glance, with its accompanying smile so full of a deep meaning, and the tears came into my eyes. I bade them good-night and went quietly into the house.
CHAPTER XIV.
Next day Arthur Campbell came to see me, as he had said, and in Cousin Bessie's humble little parlor, by the cheerful glowing embers, asked me to become his wife. I might have known it—perhaps I did know it, in spite of my wilful perverseness in denying it to myself, but I had not imagined it to be like this. There was no thrill or joy for me in the sound of his earnest voice, no definite sensation of that happiness which is said to attend this circumstance, no prospect of golden pleasures in the near future, that would find us united in these holy bonds.
It was a simple proposal of marriage from the lips of a man I respected and liked; a man of talent, and wealth and position, who flattered me by so generous an offer of his love. There was a glow of fire about his sentiment, mine had none, and yet I could not have given him up at that moment for all the world. I liked him, and I wanted to teach myself to like him still more. He had given up the attractions of worldly life on my account, and had gone back to the simple faith of his boyhood, he said my memory had been his only safe-guard where he had hitherto known no law, that I had "started up in the darkness of his life" like a steady and hopeful beacon-light that beckoned him on to better purposes.