"Then," John Derringham said, "you will be my wife by that time,
sweetheart, and you will tell your aunts the truth, ask them to keep our
secret, and say that you will return to them often, so that they shall
not be lonely. We will write it between us, darling, and I do not think
they will give us away."
"Never," returned Halcyone, while she looked rather wistfully towards
the house. "They are too proud."
He dropped her hand for an instant; the unconscious inference of this
speech made him wince. She understood, then, that she was going to do
something which her old kinswomen would think was a hurt to their pride,
and so would be silent over it in consequence. And yet she did not
hesitate. She must indeed love him very much.
A tremendous wave of emotion surged through him, and he looked at her
with reverence and worship. And for one second his own part of utter
selfishness flashed into his understanding, so that he asked, with
almost an anxious note in his deep, assured voice:
"You are not afraid, sweetheart, to come away--for all the rest of your
life--alone with me?"
And often in the after days of anguish there would come back to him the
memory of her eyes, to tear his heart with agony in the
night-watches--her pure, true eyes, with all her fresh, untarnished soul
looking out of them into his as they glistened with love and faith.
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