“I am, I am!” he exclaimed with rapture; “and now the world—life—nothing—nothing can add to the fulness of my happiness. And your note, my beloved—the conclusion of it—your own Jane Sinclair! But you must be more my own yet—legally and forever mine! Mine! Shall I be able to bear it!—shall I? Jane?” said he, his enthusiastic temperament kindling as he spoke—“Oh what, my dearest, my own dearest, if this should not last, will it not consume me? Will it not destroy me? this overwhelming excess of rapture!”
“But you must restrain it, Charles; surely the suspense arising from the doubt of our being beloved is more painful than the certainty that we are so.”
“Yes; but the exulting sense, my dear Jane, to me almost oppressive,—but I rave, I rave; it is all delight—all happiness! Yes, it will prolong life,—for we know what we live for.”
“We do,” said Jane, in a low, sweet voice, whilst her eye fed upon his beauty. “Do I not live for you, Charles?”
His lip was near her cheek as she spoke; he then gently drew her to him, and in a voice lower, and if possible more melodious than her own, said, “Oh Jane, is there not something inexpressibly affectionate—some wild and melting charm in the word wife?”
“That is a feeling,” she replied, evidently softened by the tender spirit of his words, “of which you are a better judge than I can be.”
“Oh say, my dearest, let me hear you say with your own lips, that you will be my wife.”
“I will,” she whispered—and as she spoke, he inhaled the fragrance of her breath.
“My wife!”
“Your wife!”