Salome shut the book, and looked up to read the open volume of his eloquent face; but her eyes instantly sank beneath the gaze of ardent pa.s.sion that met them.
"Listen to me, Salome, my beloved; for I love you, and have loved you ever since the first moment when I met the beautiful spirit beaming through your sweet eyes--"Sweetest eyes were ever seen!" Dear eyes! look on me!"
Salome, for all her profound and ardent affections, was still a very shy maiden. She wished to raise her eyes to his; she wished to pour her heart out to him; to let him have the comfort of knowing how perfectly she loved him, how utterly she was his own. But she could not look at him, she could not speak to him as yet. Her dark eyelashes drooped to her crimson cheeks.
"My beloved, do you hear me? I am telling you how I have loved you since I first met your heavenly eyes. This is no lover"s rhapsody, my own, for your eyes are heavenly in their spiritual beauty. And they have haunted me, Salome, like the eyes of a guardian angel ever since they first looked upon me. Daily they would have drawn me to your side but for my wrecked and ruined state," he said, with a half suppressed sigh.
His look, his tone, and, more than all, his allusion to the calamity of his house, reached her soul, and broke the spell of reserve by which she was bound.
"Oh, do not say that you are ruined!" she cried, in a voice thrilled and thrilling with profound emotion. "Do not think that you are ruined.
_You_ could _never_ be ruined. _Nothing_ could ruin _you_. It is not in the power of fate to ruin a man like YOU. And if you loved me when you first met my eyes it was because you read in them the soul that was created yours! And if these eyes have haunted you ever since it was because this soul has been always longing, yearning, aspiring towards yours!" And she dropped her face in her hands and wept for pure joy.
"Salome, Salome, can this be indeed true? Can I have been so blessed? Am I indeed so happy? Then is this abundant compensation for all that I have lost in this world! Heavenly consolation for all I have suffered on earth! Speak again, oh, my dearest! Tell me once more, for I can scarcely realize my happiness! Speak again, beloved, for your words are life to me!" he exclaimed, with profound emotion.
"Yes, I will tell you all!" she said, wiping away her joyful tears and looking up. "I will tell you everything for it is your right! You have made me so happy to-day! I loved you from the beginning. First, I loved the magnanimous, self-sacrificing man who, at the age of twenty-one years, with a brilliant future before him, could renounce all his prospects to give peace to his father"s latter years. I loved you then, Lord Arondelle, before I knew what manner of man you looked!"
"How blessed, how surely blessed I am in hearing you," he breathed, in a low and reverent tone.
"Afterward I saw your portrait in Malcolm"s Tower at Lone," she continued, in a soft voice. "And I saw a beauty and a grandeur in the face and form that seemed the fitting manifestation of a soul like yours.
And I loved you more than ever. My mornings were pa.s.sed in the tower near the glory of that picture. But I gazed on it so hopelessly! You were missing, you were lost to your world! And then I was so plain, so pale, and dark and gray-eyed. If I should ever be so fortunate as to meet you, I thought you would never be likely to love me!"
"My consolation! You are most lovely from your spirit, and now you _know_ that I loved you from my first meeting with you," he breathed, in a low, earnest tone, pouring his whole soul"s devotion through the gaze that he fixed on her face.
Again her eyes drooped as she murmured:
"If I am lovely in the very least, it must be that my love for you has made me so; for, even then, when I had only heard your story and seen your portrait, I loved you so, that I could not think of marriage with any other man."
"And that was the reason why you refused so many excellent offers?" he inquired, with a smile.
"Perhaps that was the reason," she replied, lowly bending her head.
"Tell me more, my consolation! I thirst for your words; they are as the words of life to me," he murmured, eagerly.
She continued, still speaking in a low, thrilling voice:
"At last--at last--at last--after three long years of waiting, longing, aspiring, I met you face to face. Oh!" she exclaimed, and as she spoke her hand for the first time went out to meet his, which closed upon it with a close clasp, and her eyes lifted themselves to his in a full blaze of love that seemed to blend their spirits into one.
"Oh! if in that moment you loved me, it must have been because you read my soul, for in that moment I consecrated my life to you for acceptance or rejection. I recorded a vow in heaven to be no man"s wife unless I could be yours; but to live unmarried so that when, in the course of nature, my dear father should pa.s.s to the higher life and leave me Castle Lone, I might be free to transfer it to its rightful owner."
"Ah! my beloved! you would have been capable of such an act of renunciation as that! But I could not have accepted the sacrifice, Salome."
"In that case I should have made a will and bequeathed it to you, and then prayed to the Lord to take me from the earth, that you might have it all the sooner. But let that pa.s.s. Thanks be to Heaven, there is no need of that. It would have been sweet to die for you, but it is so much sweeter to _live_ for you, dearest!" she said, lifting up a face in which rosy blushes, radiant smiles, and beaming eyes were blended in dazzling beauty.
"Oh! angel of my destiny, what can I render you for all the blessings you have brought me?" exclaimed her lover, clasping her to his bosom in a close embrace.
"Your love--your love! which will crown me a queen among women!" she whispered, softly.
The morning succeeding this scene, Lord Arondelle called and asked for a private interview with Sir Lemuel Levison.
He was invited up into the library, where he found the banker alone among his books.
"Good morning, Arondelle. Glad to see you. Take this chair," said the old gentleman, rising, shaking hands with his visitor, and placing a seat for him.
The young marquis returned the hearty shake of the banker"s hand, and took the offered chair.
"Now, I suppose that you have come to tell me that you have taken up the girl I flung at your head about a month ago?" said the banker, rubbing his hands.
"No, nothing of the sort," replied the young marquis, effectually declining to understand the jest of his host. "I do not remember that you ever flung any girl at my head. I came, Sir Lemuel, to tell you that I am so happy as to have won Miss Levison"s consent to be my wife, if we have your approbation," he added, with a bow.
"Humph! It amounts to about the same thing. Well, my dear boy, you have my consent and blessing on two conditions."
"Name them, Sir Lemuel."
"The first is, that you can a.s.sure me on your honor that you really do love my daughter. I would not give her to an emperor who did not love her as she deserves to be loved," said the banker, emphatically.
"Love her!" repeated the young man, in a deep and earnest tone. "Love is scarcely the word, nor adoration, nor worship! She is the soul of my soul! She lives in my life, and my life is the larger, higher, holier for her!"
"Humph! I don"t understand one word of what you are talking about, but I suppose it means that you really do love Salome. So the first condition will be fulfilled," said the banker, with a smile.
"And the second, sir. What is the second?"
"The second is, that the marriage shall take place within a month from this time."
"Agreed, sir. The sooner the better. The sooner I may call your lovely daughter mine, the sooner I shall be the most blessed among men,"
exclaimed the young marquis, earnestly clapping his palm into the open hand of the banker, and shaking it heartily.
"There! well, the second condition will be fulfilled. And now I will tell you what I never told you in so many words before, namely, that on the day Salome Levison becomes Marchioness of Arondelle, I will give her Lone as a marriage portion. There, now, not a word more upon that subject. I will send a message to my attorney to meet us here to-morrow morning,"
said the banker, rising and ringing the bell.
"You will let me thank--" began the marquis.
"No, I won"t!" exclaimed the banker, cutting short the young gentleman"s acknowledgements. "Excuse me now half a minute, I want to write a line,"
he added, as he hastily scribbled off a note.
A footman entered in answer to the bell.
"Take this to the office of the Messrs. Prye, Lincoln"s Inn Fields, and wait an answer," said Sir Lemuel, handing the folded note to the man, who bowed and retired.
"Prye must meet us here to-morrow morning to see to the marriage settlements. And I must see to Prye! Even lawyers may be hurried if they be well paid for making haste!" concluded the banker, rubbing his hands.
"But now go and find Salome, and tell her it is all right! She has not got a stern father to ruffle the course of her true love, but a spooney old fellow who spreads out his hands over your heads and says: "Bul-less you, my chee-ild-der-en!""
Lord Arondelle smiled at the dry banker"s imitation of the heavy stage-father, but made no comment.
"Yes, go see Salome; and then go to the duke, your father, and acquaint him with the result of your proposal. I take it for granted that you had his grace"s authority for making it."
"I had, sir. He told me to be guided by my own judgment."
"Well tell him all about the settlements as I have told them to you.
Agree to any amendment he may propose, for I will make it all right."