Part 9 (2/2)

'Oh, Henry, my dear Henry! you _must_ not say such things to me, your poor Winifred.'

'But that isn't all that I swore I'd say to you, Winifred.'

'Don't say any more--not to-night, not to-night.'

'What I swore I would ask you, Winifred, is this: Will you be Henry's wife?'

She gave one hysterical sob, and swayed till she nearly fell on the sand, and said, while her face shone like a pearl,

'Henry's wife!'

She recovered herself and stood and looked at me; her lips moved, but I waited in vain--waited in a fever of expectation--for her answer.

None came. I gazed into her eyes, but they now seemed rilled with visions--visions of the great race to which she belonged--visions in which her English lover had no place. Suddenly, and for the first time, I felt that she who had inspired within me this all-conquering pa.s.sion, though the penniless child of a drunken organist, was a daughter of Snowdon--a representative of the Cymric race that was once so mighty, and is still more romantic in its a.s.sociations than all others. Already in the little talk I had had with her I began to guess what I realised before the evening was over, that owing to the influence of the English lady, Miss Dalrymple, who had lodged at the cottage with her, she was more than my own equal in culture, and could have held her own with almost any girl of her own age in England. It was only in her subjection to Cymric superst.i.tions that she was benighted.

'Winnie,' I murmured, 'what have you to say?'

After a while her eyes seemed to clear of the visions, and she said,

'What changes have come upon us both, Henry. since that childish betrothal on the sands!'

'Happy changes for one of the child-lovers,' I said--'happy changes for the one who was then a lonely cripple shut out from all sympathy save that which the other child-lover could give.'

'And yet you then seemed happy, Henry--happy with Winnie to help you up the gangways. And how happy Winnie was! But now the child-lover is a cripple no longer: he is very, very strong--he is so strong that he could carry Winnie up the gangways in his arms, I think.'

The thrill of natural pride which such recognition of my physical powers would otherwise have given me was quelled by a something in the tone in which she spoke.

'And he is powerful in every way,' she went on, as if talking to herself. 'He is a great rich Englishman to whom (as auntie was never tired of saying) that childish betrothal must needs seem a dream--a quaint and pretty dream.'

'And so your aunt said that, Winnie. How far from the truth she was you see to-night.'

'Yes, she thought you would forget all about me; and yet she could not have felt quite confident about it, for she made me promise that if you should not forget me--if you should ever ask me what you have just asked--she made me promise--'

'What, Winnie? what? She did not make promise that you would refuse me?'

'That is what she asked me to promise.'

'But you did not.'

'I did not.'

'No, no! you did not, Winnie. My darling refused to make any such cruel, monstrous promise as that.'

'But I promised her that I would in such an event wait a year--at least a year--before betrothing myself to you.'

'Shame! shame! What made her do this cruel thing? A year! wait for a year!'

'She brought forward many reasons, Henry, but upon two of them she was constantly dwelling.'

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