Loveliest of faces, may
no gentlest wind of thought ripple thy perfect calm, until I have said
what I must, and laid it where she will find it!
"I live at Rising, the manor-house over the heath. I am the son of Lady
Cairnedge by a former marriage. I am twenty years of age, and have just
ended my last term at Oxford. May I come and see you? If you will not see
me, why then did you walk into my quiet house, and turn everything upside
down? I shall come to-night, in the dusk, and wait in the heather,
outside the fence. If you come, thank God! if you do not, I shall believe
you could not, and come again and again and again, till hope is dead. But
I warn you I am a terrible hoper.
"It would startle, perhaps offend you, to wake and see me; but I cannot
bear to leave you asleep. Something might come too near you. I will write
until you move, and then make haste to go.
"My heart swells with words too shy to go out. Surely a Will has brought
us together! I believe in fate, never in chance!
"When we see each other again, will the wall be down between us, or shall
I know it will part us all our mortal lives? Longer than that it cannot.
If you say to me, 'I must not see you, but I will think of you,' not one
shall ever know I have other than a light heart. Even now I begin the
endeavour to be such that, when we meet at last, as meet we must, you
shall not say, 'Is this the man, alas, who dared to love me!'
"I love you as one might love a woman-angel who, at the merest breath
going to fashion a word unfit, would spread her wings and soar.
Pages:
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85