"If your
love survives the sight, it will be mighty, indeed, and well
worthy a return,"
"And you will return it?"
"I will."
"You will be my wife?"
"With all my heart!"
"My darling!" he cried, rapturously - "for you are mine already -
how can I ever thank you for this? If a whole lifetime devoted
and consecrated to your happiness can repay you, it shall be
yours!"
During this rhapsody, her hand had been on the handle of the
door. Now she turned it.
"Good-night, Mr. Ormiston," she said, and vanished.
CHAPTER VII.
THE EARL'S BARGE.
Shocks of joy, they tell me, seldom kill. Of my own knowledge I
cannot say, for I have had precious little experience of such
shocks in my lifetime, Heaven knows; but in the present instance,
I can safely aver, they had no such dismal effect on Ormiston.
Nothing earthly could have given that young gentleman a greater
shock of joy than the knowledge he was to behold the long hidden
face of his idol. That that face was ugly, he did not for an
instant believe, or, at least, it never world be ugly to him.
With a form so perfect - a form a sylph might have envied - a
voice sweeter than the Singing Fountain of Arabia, hands and feet
the most perfectly beautiful the sun ever shone on, it was simply
a moral and physical impossibility, then, they could be joined to
a repulsive face.
Pages:
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117