Page:New Peterson magazine 1859 Vol. XXXV.pdf/224

 THE OLD STONE MANSION.

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lingered, the conversation was desultory, even gay. If I had wished to be reserved to Mr. Talbot, I coaid not, in the presence of the Senator, for one so shrewd wonld have noticed it and read my secret; but I did not wish to be. I felt I had been miserable without cause, and was only too happy to forget the past, if Mr. Talbot had forgotten it.

When Senator Clare left, Mr. Talbot took a seat beside me, and looking archly at me, said,

“I have found out something, since I was away.”

“Ah!” I said, inquiringly, not knowing what else to say, for his manner strangely embarrassed me.

“We are old acquaintances.”

I looked my surprise. He evidently meant we had met before this summer; and I was not conscious of it

“Indeed?” I said. “Are you sure?”

My hand lay on my lap. He took it up in his own broad palm, as if he had a right to it I did not resist him, though no other man had ever been allowed to retain it even for an instant.

“I am sure as that I hold this now,” he answered; and he lifted my hand to his lips and kissed it “These little, taper fingers,” he continUed, looking into my eyes, and speaking in a  low, tender voice, “are not more delicate than she was then.”

His tone, his whole manner, revealed to me that I was loved. I was dizzy with bliss. But I tried to turn the conversation from the dangerous point, as women will, stammering something about not understanding where we could have met.

He looked at me full of infinite love; paused, and went on.

“It all came back to me, like a flash,” he said, still retaining my hand, and smiling at my perplexed look. “I was walking in a certain street, the other day, when I recollected, suddenly, that I had been there, years and years ago. vividly the scene returned to me! The snow- covered ground; the big bully of a boy; the broken pitcher; and two eyes, that looked up me so appealingly, that I have never forgotten them. And they are the very same eyes in the woman that they were in the child.” He pressed my hand as he finished. It came back to me also like a flash. The same bold frank eyes were looking into mine now. that had cheered and encouraged me, on that dreadful day.

I felt myself blush to the very forehead. Then my glance sunk beneath his.

“And it was you!” I murmured. “I see it all now. How could I have-”

I stopped. I blushed more guiltily than before. Yet oh! how happy I was to recognise, in him, my boyish defender.

“I wonder I was so long in discovering you,” he said. “From the first hour I saw you here, I felt there was something about you, I could not tell wbat, which seemed to me strangely familiar. Looks would come back to me, from the far, far past, like those I saw daily in your eyes.”

“But how did you know, at last, that it was I?”

“Haven’t you just admitted it?” he said, archly. “I felt sure I was right,” he added, in a deeper tone, “and was curious to know if you would recollect it”

Ah! little did he know, I said to myself, how well I had recollected it; how, for years, that brave lad had been my childish idea of a hero.

There was a silence, which he was the first to break.

“I had other reasons, too, for my belief. I used often to think of that little girl, and wonder what became of her: so much so, that, at last, I went to the house, which I had seen her enter, And asked about her. They told me of the death of your mother, and that you had been takeN away by an uncle. Both his name and yours I had forgot, in the course of time; but they came back, all at once, as I stood in the narrow street again: and I remembered that they coincided with yours and Mr. Elliott’s.”

He paused a moment: then went on, his voioe thing about not understanding where we could taking a tenderer tone.

“I had the good fortune to defend you once, dear Margaret: will you not permit me to be your defender all your life? Heaven surely has intended us for each other. I feel, that, between our souls, now that we are adults, there is a sympathy that can never die. Is it not so?" What could I say? What I did say, the reader will imagine, from what I have told of myself before. The engagement made a great talk.

I had wished to keep it secret, but Georgiana, in a  ﬁt of  spleen, proclaimed it, knowing it would annoy me. Impertinent young ladies told me how all the rest envied me, and as the mothers, generally, looked coldly on me, I suppose I was told the truth. I was quite ready, for my part, to believe that I was legitimately a subject of envy, for no nobler man lived, or had ever lived, I said to myself, than Mr. Talbot.