SWEETHEARTS IN A DANDY
For my part I breakfasted with the avidity of a shipwrecked man. Ashore it might have been otherwise, but the sea breeze is a noble neutraliser of whatever is undesirable in the obligations which attend an excess of sentiment and emotion.
The cabin made as pretty a little marine piece as ever the light of the early sun flashed into. There were flowers of fragrance and of rich colours; the small table sparkled with its hospitable furniture; the polished bulkheads rippled with light, and the diamond-like glance of the lustrous, dancing sea seemed to be swept by the blue air gushing athwart the sky-light into the mirrors, which enriched this little boudoir of a cabin. But it was the presence of Grace which informed this picture with those qualities of sweetness, elegance, refinement, perfume, which I now found in it, but had not before noticed. How proudly my young heart rose to the sight of her! to the thought of her as my own, one and indivisible, no longer the distant hope, which for weary months past her aunt had made her to me, but my near sweetheart—my present darling—her hand within reach of my grasp.
We sat together in earnest conversation. It was not for me to pretend that I could witness no imprudence in our elopement. Indeed, I took care to let her know that I regretted the step we had been forced into taking as fully as she did. My love was an influence upon her, and whatever I said I felt might weigh with her childish heart. But I repeated what I had again and again written to her—that there had been no other alternative than this elopement.
"You wished me to wait," I said, "until you were twenty-one, when you would be your own mistress. But to wait for more than three years! What was to happen in that time? They might have converted you—"
"No," she cried.
"And have wrought a complete change in your nature," I went on. "How many girls are there who could resist the sort of pressure they were subjecting you to one way and another?"
"They could not have changed my heart, Herbert."
"How can we tell? Under their influence in another year you might have come to congratulate yourself upon your escape from me."
"Do you think so? Then you should have granted me another year, because marriage," she added, with a look in her eyes that was like a wistful smile, "is a very serious thing, and if you believe that I should be rejoicing in a year hence over my escape from you, as you call it, then you must believe that I have no business to be here."