“Joy!” she cried, looking at him with brilliant eyes, and a faint color mantling her face, “you come back to me with a changed look! You have succeeded.”
“Not yet,” he replied, proudly smiling, “but we are going to succeed. Come, let us sit together, and let me tell you what has occurred, and my plan.”
They sat down, with their arms around each other, and he told her all, and what he was going to do. She listened to the end in dreamful silence, smiling faintly, and occasionally bending her graceful head in assent to his designs.
“Now, what do you think?” he asked in conclusion. “How does the enterprise strike you?”
“I like it,” she replied, half gaily. “It is bold, simple, and I think you cannot fail of success. Go manfully then to the little battle for the good cause, and come back with your shield, or upon it. My soul goes with you.”
He folded her to his heart, proudly smiling.
“Dear friend, brave wife,” he said, fondly. “Thank heaven that we are wedded for life’s duties and life’s ends! Oh, blessed love that has not shut us in a private luxury, careless of liberty and justice and the tears of man! Yes—I will go on this enterprise of mercy, and I feel I shall succeed.”
They sat in fervent communion till the twilight fell. Emily came in as it began to darken, and they had just finished telling her what was to be done, and were charging her to say nothing of it to Mrs. Eastman, when Wentworth arrived in great spirits.
“All right,” he cried, upon entering. “The deed is done, and I feel like Benvenuto Cellini when he drew his rapier, and fought the whole gang of the Pope’s soldiers, single-handed, pinking a couple of dozen of the rascals. Ha! that was an artist for you! Oh, Benvenuto was a regular brick, he was.”
“Now, Richard! Slang again,” chided Emily.