sobbing, crimson with blushes, in a half-swoon of happiness?
"You love me, Violet?" he cried.
He had set such 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 upon their lashes, like the morning dew upon the flowers? Was there not reply enough in the trembling parted lips, although no sound came from them?
"You will ignore the past?"
"Always."
"And think only of the future?"
"Yes, Wilford."
She was heard at last. Such a soft, timid voice.
A white scared face looked in for a moment at the door, and a pair of large blue eyes opened very wide indeed at what they beheld.
"Perhaps I'd better keep out in the garden," Madge Fuller murmured to herself. "Perhaps I have not done so very wrong after all," and then she concluded with the fearful proposition contained in the words "perhaps it's as well to be indiscreet now and then."
Soon after Wilford passed into Mr. Fuller's surgery.
"Doctor," he began, in a firm voice. "I told you just now that there was yet another reason why I should quit you."
"Are you going to worry me again about this matter, you obstinate boy?"
"You must hear me."
"Am I not safe even in my own surgery?"
"Doctor," Wilford went on seriously. "It would be wrong to conceal this thing from you for one moment longer than absolutely necessary." The doctor looked at his patient, and perceived that he was decidedly in earnest.
"What do you mean, Wilford? Is there anything the matter?"
"This. I love your daughter, Violet."
"What!" cried the doctor, amazed.
"I love your daughter. I believe that love to be returned. I am here to ask your consent to our union."
The doctor turned quite pale.
"You don't mean this," he said. "You're jesting, surely. No—you're not, though. There's no jesting in your face. But can this be? You love Violet?"
"Indeed I do. Is it not a reason why you should wish me hence? For I know how unworthy I am of her. But, oh! let it be a reason for my return—for my coming back here to make her mine!"
"I never dreamt of such a thing as this."
"Indeed I will endeavour to deserve her. Indeed I will devote my whole life to her happiness. Don't think of me as I have been. I am as a new creature henceforward. Indeed, doctor, I am changed."
"But you, old Mr. Hadfield's son, to marry the daughter of a country doctor! What will be thought of such a thing? What will they say at the Grange?"
"What will it matter what they say? Besides, don't think of me as Mr. Hadfield's son; think of me as I am: no more the heir to the Grange and the Hadfield lands; but cast-off, poor, penitent, and yet with a deep love in my heart for Violet! I regret my lost position only because I cannot ask her to share it. If I could ask her to be mistress of the Grange!"
"No, no; that could never have been! Bad enough as it is! quite bad enough. What will they say throughout Grilling Abbots?" and the doctor wiped his forehead. "In what a situation you have placed me. Why all the old women in the town will rise against me. The tea-tables will be up en masse."
"Doctor, O thank you. I see you are relenting."
"I'm not indeed! I'm all in a fever. What I shall be charged with! They will say I brought you here on purpose. That I set a trap for the old Squire's son. By heavens! it is not to be borne. No, Wilford, you must go, I see that plain enough; but as for coming back again—"
"Yet, consider, doctor, for Violet's sake—if she loves me—"
"Does she love you? and Mr. Fuller rubbed his chin meditatively.
"She does."
"You're sure? You look so. O Violet! I didn't believe you'd do such a thing!"
"But, Mr. Fuller—"
"There—there—don't talk to me. I must think it all over; it requires consideration; a very great deal of consideration. By-and-by I'll tell you more about it. I'll speak to you again. Now, go, leave me, there's a good fellow, let me have some peace. I've a heap of things to do, all sorts of medicines to make up. There—there—go." And Wilford was gently pushed out of the room.
The doctor paced up and down with long strides and unusual rapidity, crumpling up in his excitement a large, many-hued silk handkerchief to quite a ball in his hand.
"I've been an ass," he said, "and that's the simple truth. I ought to have foreseen all this. I ought to have known that some such thing as this was likely to happen. And yet I never gave it a thought; and to see him so sad and ill and broken down as he was when he first came here, who would have expected him to fall in love with Violet? My dear, dear daughter Violet—so like her mother, too. I'm sure I can