In about five minutes’ time, however, I saw her returning through the trees. She smiled very sweetly on seeing me seated and smoking, and exclaimed with indescribable sauciness, “I think you are very wise to rest yourself after your late severe attack.”
“I hope,” I answered a little sarcastically, “that you didn’t run away from me because you were afraid!”
“Oh, no,” she exclaimed, with serene candour shining in her countenance; “one of the servants—but I mustn’t tell stories out of school. This is my little secret; so ask me no questions.”
“I must ask you one question,” I replied, melted and won over as any petulant child is with a sweetmeat, by her delightful manner, “will you give me leave to love you?”
“Now, listen to me, Charlie,” said she, laying her little hand on my arm and upturning her celestial eyes, so that I could see my own lovely features gazing at me out of them, like twin cherubs leaning forth from the blue vaults of paradise. “You have not yet given me time to love you; and I have determined never to marry until I do love. I like you very much now, and that is all I mean to say for the present. You’ll never be able to make me love you by constantly questioning me. You must take this for my answer, and not say another word about what has passed between us until I give you leave.”
“But how long are you going to take?” said I, fretfully. “You put me in the position of a child who is told to shut its eyes and open its mouth, and see what it will get; whereby it may get the lock-jaw, to say nothing of the exquisite mental torture it is subjected to by blindness under such conditions.”
“Ah, we must all learn to be patient in this world,” she answered, with a look of real sadness in her face.
“Well, Conny,” said I, raising her hand to my lips, “I am so much in love with you, that I will do anything you want—though I would rather you ordered me to hang myself than wait.”
“Let us go in, I begin to feel the air a little chilly.”
We walked to the house; but, as I had not finished my cigar, and as, so far from feeling the air chilly, I found it peculiarly mild and delightful, I said I would remain on the lawn, making sure, of course, that she would join me. She went into the house, and I walked to the seat under the oak-tree, where I sat waiting and watching, and watching and waiting, and wondering where she was, and what she was doing, until my cigar was burned out, and the evening had fairly fallen; when I rose and entered the drawing-room, expecting to find her there. Then I peeped into the dining-room, and then into the library. “She is in her bed-room,” I thought; and not very well knowing what to do with myself, I returned to the grounds.