Page:Lady Athlyne (IA ladyathlyne00stok).pdf/201

 "And I love you, my darling, more than I have words to say. More than words can express. I am lost in you. You are my world, my hope, my heaven! Beyond measure I love you, and honour you, and trust you; and now that I feel you love me too … My dear! … my dear! the whole world seems to swim around me and the heavens to open …"

"Dear, go on. It is music to me—all music—that I have so longed for!"

"Darling! It seems like sacrilege to say anything just now—but—but—You know I love you?"

"Yes!" The simple word was stronger than any embellishment; it was of the completeness, the majesty, of sincerity in its expression.

"Then there is no need to say more of that now … But before I say something else which I long to hear—in words, dear, for its truth is already in my heart …"

"Darling!" she spoke the word lingeringly as though grudging that its saying must end …

"Before such time I must speak with your father!" He spoke the words with a gravity which brought a chill to her heart; her face blanched suddenly as does liquid in the final crystallization of frost. Her voice was faint—she was only a girl after all, despite her pride and bravery—as she asked:

"Oh, I hope it is nothing.…"

"Nothing, darling" he said as he stroked tenderly the hand that lay in his—he had taken his arm from her waist to do it—"except the courtesy which is due to an old man … and one other thing, small in itself—absolutely nothing in my own mind—which makes it necessary in respect to his … his … his convictions that I should speak to him before …" He stopped suddenly, remembering that if he went on he must betray the secret which as yet he wished to keep. Not on his own account