Page:The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (emended first edition), Volume 1.djvu/347

Rh "I thought light hair would suit her better. You see I have made her blue-eyed, and plump, and fair and rosy."

"Upon my word—a very Hebe! I should fall in love with her, if I hadn't the artist before me. Sweet innocent! she's thinking there will come a time when she will be wooed and won like that pretty hen-dove, by as fond and fervent a lover; and she's thinking how pleasant it will be, and how tender and faithful he will find her."

"And perhaps," suggested I, "how tender and faithful she shall find him."

"Perhaps—for there is no limit to the wild extravagance of hope's imaginings, at such an age."

"Do you call that, then, one of her wild, extravagant delusions?"

"No; my heart tells me it is not. I might have thought so once, but now, I say, give me the girl I love, and I will swear eternal constancy to her and her alone, through summer