Daisy in the Field | Page 3

my treasure still, through all this. Thorold loved me and belonged to me; nothing could change that. Dangers, and even death, would not touch it. My mother's command could not alter it. She might forbid his marrying me; I must obey her; but the fact that we loved each other was a fact beyond her reach and out of her, power, as out of mine. Thorold belonged to me, in this higher and indestructible sense, and also I belonged to him. And in this joy I rejoiced, and counted my treasure with an inexpressible triumph of joy that it was uncountable.
I wondered too, very much. I had had no idea that I loved Thorold; no dream that he liked me had ever entered my head. I thought we were friends, and that was all. Indeed I had not known there was anything in the world more, until one night ago.
But I winced a little, privately, in the very bottom of my heart, that I had let Thorold have so much liberty; that I had let him know so easily what he was to me. I seemed unlike the Daisy Randolph of my former acquaintance. She was never so free. But it was done; and I had been taken unawares and at disadvantage, with the thought of coming danger and separation checking every reserve I would have shown. I had to be content with myself at all events; Thorold knew my weakness and would never forget it another time.
I thought a great many other thoughts that night; some of them were grave enough. My sleep however, when I went to sleep, was as light as the fall of the dew. I could not be careful. Just seventeen, and just come into life's great inheritance, my spirit was strong, as such spirits are, to throw off every burden.
For several days it happened that I was too busy to see Miss Cardigan. I used to look over to her house, those days, as the place where I had begun to live. Meanwhile I was bending my energies to work, with a serious consciousness of woman's life and responsibility before me. In one way I think I felt ten years older, when next I crossed the avenue and went into the familiar marble-paved hall and opened Miss Cardigan's door. That Thorold was not there, was the first thought with me. Certainly the world had made a revolution; but all things else looked as usual; and Miss Cardigan gave me a welcome just as if the world had not turned round. She was busy with the affairs of some poor people, and plunged me into them as her custom was. But I fancied a somewhat more than usual of sober gravity in her manner. I fancied, and then was sure of it; though for a long time nothing was said which touched Thorold or me. I had forgotten that it was to come; and then it came.
"And what have ye been doing, my bonnie lady, since ye went away at eight o'clock o' the morn?"
I started, and found that I had lost myself in a reverie. I said, I had been studying.
"You and me have need to study some new things," Miss Cardigan said, soberly.
"Yes ma'am," I said. But then - "What, Miss Cardigan?"
"There's our duty" - she said, with a pause at that part of her sentence; - "and then, how to do it. Yes, Daisy, you need not look at me, nor call the bloom up into your cheeks, that Christian says are such an odd colour. Don't you think you have duties, lassie? and more to-day than a fortnight syne?"
"But - Miss Cardigan," I answered, - "yes, I have duties; but - I thought I knew them."
"It will do no harm to look at them, Daisy. It is good to see all round our duties, and it's hard too. Are you in a hurry to go back to school?"
"No, ma'am - I can have the evening."
Miss Cardigan pushed her work-baskets and table away, and drew her chair up beside mine, before the fire; and made it blaze, and sat and looked into the blaze, till I wondered what was coming.
"I suppose this is all a fixed thing between Christian and you," she began at last.
I hardly knew what she meant. I said, that I could not unfix it.
"And he will not, no fear! So it is fixed, as we may say; fixed as two hearts can make it. But it's very sudden, Daisy; and you are a young thing, my dear."
"I know it is sudden," I said, meekly. "It is sudden to me. But he will not like me less for my being so young."
Miss Cardigan laughed a short laugh.
"Troth, he's no right, being young himself, we may say. You are safe