227 CHAPTER IX. WILFORD'S WOOING. "IT is a very poor thing I offer you, Violet-the love of a ruined man; but, at least, that love is true, and whole, and earnest. Indeed, I never felt my ruin before; and if I wish for wealth now, it is only that I may lay it at your feet. I know how poor my claim I know how little I have done to merit your love. I know that my debt of gratitude to you is already more, far is. more, than I can ever hope to repay. And yet, Violet, I am here—at your feet to proffer you my heart, and to ask for yours. Give it to me. Give me a motive for life; give me something to make the future precious to me; not because of any deserving of mine, but out of your great goodness and pity. Do I pain you, Violet, talking like this? But indeed I can no more be silent; for I love you, Violet, and that love will find its way into words. It is my only claim; besides that, I have nothing. A broken, wearied man, just escaped from a wreck in which all fortune has gone down. With a misspent past, shattered in health, disinherited, fortuneless, there seems a madness and a wrong-doing about my quest. How can I dare to raise my hopes so high as you are, Violet? I cannot on the justify myself. I cannot reason subject. I can only tell you that my love is honest and true. I swear to you that it is. I can only that all man can do to assure you make you happy, dear Violet, I will do. Bid me not despair wholly of winning you. Let me think that you will forget the past, that you will treat it as dead to both of us, and that in the future there may be yet some hope of happiness; that you will permit my journey through life to commence anew from now, with you, Violet, by my side. How light it will seem! How full of joy! Never to look back; to efface all memory of the past by the new life of the future! May this be so, Violet? Oh, say that it may!" In some such hurried sentences, broken by emotion, impressive from the feverish earnestness with which they were uttered, Wilford Hadfield told the story of his love. 66 Madge has betrayed me," thought Violet, as he began; and she was hurt at first-then appeased-then, as he went on, and his words and fervid tones stirred up strange echoes amongst the depths of her own heart, and the consciousness of her own love for him grew upon her more and more, what could she do but yield to the entrancement of his confession, and with her heart beating tumultuously, steal a soft white hand into his, and fall at last upon his shoulder, tearful, sobbing, crimson with blushes, in a half-swoon of happiness? "You love me, Violet?" he cried. He had set such a a value upon her love, he could scarcely credit it could be his so readily. It had seemed to be so far from him-at least he had so fancied it-that now, when it came quite near to him-was within his arm's length, as it were he almost shrunk back, sceptical, paralysed, by a happiness he had thought too great to be real, to be other than imaginary. Just as in dreams of great joy, however real they may seem, the dreamer finds himself suspending his belief with the question :-"Are not these things too glorious to be true?" Indeed great happiness, like great misery, is dazing, bewildering, stupefying. We cannot receive either on the instant wholly into our intelligences; we must take them piecemeal, and so at last get the entirety through the bars of our minds. "You love me, Violet?" he repeated. Was it necessary to ask the question? Was he not sufficiently answered by those dark grey eyes, and the tears glistening |