Rossmoyne Part 83

"Yes. He has just discovered her to be the most superior as well as the loveliest woman upon earth. He told me so. I ventured mildly, but firmly, to differ with him and enter a protest on your behalf, but he wouldn't hear of it. In his opinion you are nowhere beside the majestic Hermia."

"I know that. He is right," says Monica, meekly. But there is a reproachful question in her eyes, as she says it, that contradicts the meekness.

"He is _not_," says Desmond, with loving indignation, pressing her dear little head so close against his heart that she can hear it throbbing bravely and can find joy in the thought that each separate throb is all her own. "The man who thinks so must be insane. A fig for Hermia! Where would she be if placed beside _you_, my 'Helen fair beyond compare'?"

"You are prejudiced; you tell too flattering a tale," says Monica, with soft disparagement; but the fond, foolish, lover-like words are very dear and sweet to her, all the same.

He has his arms round her; in her tender childish fashion she has laid her cheek against his; and now, with a slow movement, she turns her head until her lips reach his.

"I love you," she whispers.

Almost in a sigh the words are breathed, and a sense of rapture--of completion--renders the young man for the instant mute. Yet in her soul so well she knows of his content that she cares little for any answer save that which his fond eyes give.

A breath from the sleeping world of flowers below comes up to the balcony and bathes the lovers in its sweets. The "wandering moon" looks down upon them, and lights up the dark windows behind them, till they looked like burnished silver. A deadly silence lies on gra.s.s and bough; it seems to them as though, of all the eager world, they two only are awake, and alone!

"Do I count with you, then, as more than all?" he says, at length; "than Terence or than Kit?"

"You know it," she says, earnestly.

Suddenly he loosens his arms from round her, and, pushing her slender, white-robed figure gently backwards, gazes searchingly into her calm but wondering face.

"Tell me," he says,--some mad, inward craving driving him to ask the needless question--"how would it have been with you if I had been killed yesterday? Would you _in time_ have loved again?"

I am not sure, but I think he would have recalled the words when it is too late. A quiver runs through the girl's frame; a great wave of emotion sweeping over her face transfigures it, changing its calm to quick and living grief. The moonbeams, catching her, fold her in floods of palest glory, until he who watches her with remorseful eyes can only liken her to a fragile saint, as she stands there in her white, clinging draperies.

"You are cruel," she says, at last, with a low, gasping cry.

He falls at her feet.

"Forgive me, my love, my darling!" he entreats, "I should never have said that, and yet I am glad I did. To feel, to _know_ you are altogether mine----"

"You had a doubt?" she says; and then two large tears rise slowly, until her beautiful eyes look pa.s.sionate reproach at him through a heavy mist.

Then the mist clears, and two shining drops, quitting their sweet home, fall upon the back of the small hand she has placed nervously against her throat.

"A last one, and it is gone _forever_." He rises to his feet. "Place your arms round my neck again," he says, with anxious entreaty, "and let me feel myself forgiven."

A smile, as coy as it is tender, curves her dainty lips, as she lifts to his two, soft, dewy eyes, in which the light of a first love has at last been fully kindled. She comes a step nearer to him, still smiling,--a lovely thing round which the moonbeams riot as though in ecstasy over her perfect fairness,--and then in another instant they are both in heaven, "in paradise in one another's arms!"

"You are happy?" questions he, after a long pause, into which no man may look.

"I am with _you_," returns she, softly.

"How sweet a meaning lies within your words!"

"A true meaning. But see, how late it grows! For a few hours we must part. Until to-morrow--good-night!"

"Good-night, my life! my sweet, _sweet_ heart!" says Desmond.

THE END.