LITMIR.BIZ

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common simple words; and used them, no doubt, to express a common simple meaning: but to him she was uttering magic, casting spells, and the effect they had on him was manifested in the incoherence of his replies, which were too foolish to be chronicled.

      The couple were again mute. Suddenly Miranda, with an exclamation of anguish, and innumerable lights and shadows playing over her lovely face, clapped her hands, crying aloud, “My book! my book!” and ran to the bank.

      Prince Ferdinand was at her side. “What have you lost?” he said.

      “My book!” she answered, her delicious curls swinging across her shoulders to the stream. Then turning to him, “Oh, no, no! let me entreat you not to,” she said; “I do not so very much mind losing it.” And in her eagerness to restrain him she unconsciously laid her gentle hand upon his arm, and took the force of motion out of him.

      “Indeed, I do not really care for the silly book,” she continued, withdrawing her hand quickly, and reddening. “Pray, do not!”

      The young gentleman had kicked off his shoes. No sooner was the spell of contact broken than he jumped in. The water was still troubled and discoloured by his introductory adventure, and, though he ducked his head with the spirit of a dabchick, the book was missing. A scrap of paper floating from the bramble just above the water, and looking as if fire had caught its edges and it had flown from one adverse element to the other, was all he could lay hold of; and he returned to land disconsolately, to hear Miranda’s murmured mixing of thanks and pretty expostulations.

      “Let me try again,” he said.

      “No, indeed!” she replied, and used the awful threat: “I will run away if you do,” which effectually restrained him.

      Her eye fell on the fire-stained scrap of paper, and brightened, as she cried, “There, there! you have what I want. It is that. I do not care for the book. No, please! You are not to look at it. Give it me.”

      Before her playfully imperative injunction was fairly spoken, Richard had glanced at the document and discovered a Griffin between two Wheatsheaves: his crest in silver: and below—O wonderment immense! his own handwriting!

      He handed it to her. She took it, and put it in her bosom.

      Who would have thought, that, where all else perished, Odes, Idyls, Lines, Stanzas, this one Sonnet to the stars should be miraculously reserved for such a starry fate—passing beatitude!

      As they walked silently across the meadow, Richard strove to remember the hour and the mood of mind in which he had composed the notable production. The stars were invoked, as seeing and foreseeing all, to tell him where then his love reclined, and so forth; Hesper was complacent enough to do so, and described her in a couplet—

           “Through sunset’s amber see me shining fair,

           As her blue eyes shine through her golden hair.”

      And surely no words could be more prophetic. Here were two blue eyes and golden hair; and by some strange chance, that appeared like the working of a divine finger, she had become the possessor of the prophecy, she that was to fulfil it! The youth was too charged with emotion to speak. Doubtless the damsel had less to think of, or had some trifling burden on her conscience, for she seemed to grow embarrassed. At last she drew up her chin to look at her companion under the nodding brim of her hat (and the action gave her a charmingly freakish air), crying, “But where are you going to? You are wet through. Let me thank you again; and, pray, leave me, and go home and change instantly.”

      “Wet?” replied the magnetic muser, with a voice of tender interest; “not more than one foot, I hope. I will leave you while you dry your stockings in the sun.”

      At this she could not withhold a shy laugh.

      “Not I, but you. You would try to get that silly book for me, and you are dripping wet. Are you not very uncomfortable?”

      In all sincerity he assured her that he was not.

      “And you really do not feel that you are wet?”

      He really did not: and it was a fact that he spoke truth.

      She pursed her dewberry mouth in the most comical way, and her blue eyes lightened laughter out of the half-closed lids.

      “I cannot help it,” she said, her mouth opening, and sounding harmonious bells of laughter in his ears. “Pardon me, won’t you?”

      His face took the same soft smiling curves in admiration of her.

      “Not to feel that you have been in the water, the very moment after!” she musically interjected, seeing she was excused.

      “It’s true,” he said; and his own gravity then touched him to join a duet with her, which made them no longer feel strangers, and did the work of a month of intimacy. Better than sentiment, laughter opens the breast to love; opens the whole breast to his full quiver, instead of a corner here and there for a solitary arrow. Hail the occasion propitious, O British young! and laugh and treat love as an honest God, and dabble not with the sentimental rouge. These two laughed, and the souls of each cried out to other, “It is I it is I.”

      They laughed and forgot the cause of their laughter, and the sun dried his light river clothing, and they strolled toward the blackbird’s copse, and stood near a stile in sight of the foam of the weir and the many-coloured rings of eddies streaming forth from it.

      Richard’s boat, meanwhile, had contrived to shoot the weir, and was swinging, bottom upward, broadside with the current down the rapid backwater.

      “Will you let it go?” said the damsel, eying it curiously.

      “It can’t be stopped,” he replied, and could have added: “What do I care for it now!”

      His old life was whirled away with it, dead, drowned. His new life was with her, alive, divine.

      She flapped low the brim of her hat. “You must really not come any farther,” she softly said.

      “And will you go, and not tell me who you are?” he asked, growing bold as the fears of losing her came across him. “And will you not tell me before you go”—his face burned—“how you came by that—that paper?”

      She chose to select the easier question for answer: “You ought to know me; we have been introduced.” Sweet was her winning off-hand affability.

      “Then who, in heaven’s name, are you? Tell me! I never could have forgotten you.”

      “You have, I think,” she said.

      “Impossible that we could ever have met, and I forget you!”

      She looked up at him.

      “Do you remember Belthorpe?”

      “Belthorpe! Belthorpe!” quoth Richard, as if he had to touch his brain to recollect there was such a place. “Do you mean old Blaize’s farm?”

      “Then I am old Blaize’s niece.” She tripped him a soft curtsey.

      The magnetized youth gazed at her. By what magic was it that this divine sweet creature could be allied with that old churl!

      “Then what—what is your name?” said his mouth, while his eyes added, “O wonderful creature! How came you to enrich the earth?”

      “Have you forgot the Desboroughs of Dorset, too?” she peered at him from a side-bend of the flapping brim.

      “The Desboroughs of Dorset?” A light broke in on him. “And have you grown to this? That little girl I saw there!”

      He drew close to her to read the nearest features of the vision. She could no more laugh off the piercing fervour of his eyes. Her volubility fluttered under his deeply wistful look, and now neither voice was high, and they were mutually constrained.

      “You see,” she murmured, “we are old acquaintances.”

      Richard, with his eyes still intently fixed on her, returned, “You are very beautiful!”

      The words slipped out. Perfect simplicity is unconsciously

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