this picnic, though it seemed half a lifetime to George Gilbert, for he walked with Isabel through the lanes between Hurstonleigh grove and Hurstonleigh village, and he loitered with her in the little churchyard at Hurstonleigh, and stood upon the bridge beneath which the Wayverne crept like a riband of silver, winding in and out among the rushes. He lingered there by her side while the orphans and Sigismund and Mr. Raymond were getting tea ready at the model cottage, and putting the model old woman's wits into such a state of "flustrification," as she herself expressed it, that she could scarcely hold the tea-kettle, and was in imminent peril of breaking one of her best "chaney" saucers, produced from a corner cupboard in honour of her friend and patron, Charles Raymond.
George loitered on the little stone bridge with Isabel, and somehow or other, still emboldened by the sparkling Burgundy, his passion all of a sudden found a voice, and he told her that he loved her, and that his highest hope upon earth was the hope of winning her for his wife.
I suppose that simple little story must be a pretty story, in its way; for when a woman hears it for the first time, she is apt to feel kindly disposed to the person who recites it, however poorly or tamely he may tell his tale. Isabel listened with a most delightful complacency; not because she reciprocated George's affection for her, but because this was the first little bit of romance in her life, and she felt that the story was beginning all at once, and that she was going to be a heroine. She felt this; and with this a kind of grateful liking for the young man at her side, through whose agency all these pleasant feelings came to her.
And all this time George was pleading with her, and arguing, from her blushes and her silence, that his suit was not hopeless. Emboldened by the girl's tacit encouragement, he grew more and more eloquent, and went on to tell her how he had loved her from the first; yes, from that first summer's afternoon – when he had seen her sitting under the pear-trees in the old-fashioned garden, with the low yellow light behind her.
"Of course I didn't know then that I loved you, Isabel – oh, may I call you Isabel? it is such a pretty name. I have written it over and over and over on the leaves of a blotting-book at home, very often without knowing that I was writing it. I only thought at first that I admired you, because you are so beautiful, and so different from other beautiful women; and then, when I was always thinking of you, and wondering about you, I wouldn't believe that it was because I loved you. It is only to-day – this dear, happy day – that has made me understand what I have felt all along; and now I know that I have loved you from the first, Isabel, dear Isabel, from the very first."
All this was quite as it should be. Isabel's heart fluttered like the wings of a young bird that essays its first flight.
"This is what it is to be a heroine," she thought, as she looked down at the coloured pebbles, the floating river weeds, under the clear rippling water; and yet knew all the time, by virtue of feminine second-sight, that George Gilbert was gazing at her and adoring her. She didn't like him, but she liked him to be there talking to her. The words she heard for the first time were delightful to her because of their novelty, but they took no charm from the lips that spoke them. Any other good-looking, respectably-dressed young man would have been quite as much to her as George Gilbert was. But then she did not know this. It was so very easy for her to mistake her pleasure in the "situation;" the rustic bridge, the rippling water, the bright spring twilight, even the faint influence of that one glass of sparkling Burgundy, and, above all, the sensation of being a heroine for the first time in her life – it was so terribly easy to mistake all these for that which she did not feel, – a regard for George Gilbert.
While the young man was still pleading, while she was still listening to him, and blushing and glancing shyly at him out of those wonderful tawny-coloured eyes, which seemed black just now under the shadow of their drooping lashes, Sigismund and the orphans appeared at the distant gate of the churchyard whooping and hallooing, to announce that the tea was all ready.
"Oh, Isabel!" cried George, "they are coming, and it maybe ever so long before I see you again alone. Isabel, dear Isabel! do tell me that you will make me happy – tell me that you will be my wife!"
He did not ask her if she loved him; he was too much in love with her – too entirely impressed with her grace and beauty, and his own inferiority – to tempt his fate by such a question. If she would marry him, and let him love her, and by-and-by reward his devotion by loving him a little, surely that would be enough to satisfy his most presumptuous wishes.
"Dear Isabel, you will marry me, won't you? You can't mean to say no, – you would have said it before now. You would not be so cruel as to let me hope, even for a minute, if you meant to disappoint me."
"I have known you – you have known me – such a short time," the girl murmured.
"But long enough to love you with a love that will last all my life," George answered eagerly. "I shall have no thought except to make you happy, Isabel. I know that you are so beautiful that you ought to marry a very different fellow from me, – a man who could give you a grand house, and carriages and horses, and all that sort of thing; but he could never love you better than I, and he mightn't love you as well, perhaps; and I'll work for you, Isabel, as no man ever worked before. You shall never know what poverty is, darling, if you will be my wife."
"I shouldn't mind being poor," Isabel answered, dreamily.
She was thinking that Walter Gay had been poor, and that the chief romance of Florence's life had been the quiet wedding in the little City church, and the long sea voyage with her young husband. This sort of poverty was almost as nice as poor Edith's miserable wealth, with diamonds flung about and trampled upon, and ruby velvet for every-day wear.
"I shouldn't mind so much being poor," repeated the girl; for she thought, if she didn't marry a duke or a Dombey, it would be at least something to experience the sentimental phase of poverty.
George Gilbert seized upon the words.
"Ah, then, you will marry me, dearest Isabel? you will marry me, my own darling, my beautiful wife?"
He was almost startled by the intensity of his own feelings, as he bent down and kissed the little ungloved hand lying on the moss-grown stonework of the bridge.
"Oh, Isabel, if you could only know how happy you have made me! if you could only know – "
She looked at him with a startled expression in her face. Was it all settled, then, so suddenly – with so little consideration? Yes, it was all settled; she was beloved with one of those passions that endure for a lifetime. George had said something to that effect. The story had begun, and she was a heroine.
"Good gracious me!" cried Mr. Smith, as he bounded on the parapet of the little bridge, and disported himself there in the character of an amateur Blondin; "if the model old woman who has had so many prizes – we've been looking at her diplomas, framed and glazed, in a parlour that I couldn't have believed to exist out of "Lilian the Deserted" (who begins life as the cottager's daughter, you know, and elopes with the squire in top-boots out of a diamond-paned window – and I've been trying the model old woman's windows, and Lilian couldn't have done it), – but I was about to remark, that if the old woman hasn't had a prize for a model temper, you two will catch it for keeping the tea waiting. Why, Izzie, what's the matter? you and George are both looking as spooney as – is it, eh? – yes, it is: isn't it? Hooray! Didn't I see it from the first?" cried Mr. Smith, striking an attitude upon the balustrade, and pointing down to the two blushing faces with a triumphant finger. "When George asked me for your letter, Izzie, – the little bit of a letter you wrote me when you left Camberwell, – didn't I see him fold it up as gingerly as if it had been a fifty-pound note and slip it into his waistcoat-pocket, and then try to look as if he hadn't done it? Do you think I wasn't fly, then? A pretty knowledge of human nature I should have, if I couldn't see through that. The creator of Octavio Montefiasco, the Demon of the Galleys, flatters himself
