The Courting of Lady Jane | Page 7

"Oh, Jack, how can you hurt me so? You know I would live with you in a garret--on the plains--"
"Then do it."
"I shall never hurt a person so terribly to whom I have freely given my word," she said, with a touch of her old-time decision.
Colonel Driscoll felt his blood sweeping through his veins like wine. He was far too excited for finesse, too eager--and he had been so willing to wait, once!--for the next sweet moment when this almost tragedy should be resolved into its elements. He strode out into the open space in front of the little house.
"My dear young people," he said, as they stared at him in absolute silence, "I am, I am--" He had intended to carry the matter off jocularly, but the sight of the girl's tear-stained face and the emotion of the minutes before had softened and awed him. His eyes seemed yet to hold those gray ones; he felt strangely the pressure of that soft body against his.
"Ah, my dear," he said gently, "could you not believe me when I told you that my one wish was to make you happy as long as I lived? Happiness is not built on mistakes, and you must forgive us if we do not always allow youth to monopolize them.
"She has always been like a dear child to me, Mr. Morris"--he turned to the other man--"and you would never wish me to change my regard for her, could you know it!
"Go with him, Lady dear, and forgive me if I have ever pained you--believe me, I am very happy to-night."
He raised her softly as she knelt before him weeping, and kissed her hair.
"But there is nothing to forgive," he assured her.
They went away hand in hand, happy, like two dazed children for whom the sky has suddenly but not--because they are young--too miraculously opened, and the shrubbery swallowed them.
He turned and strode back into the shadow. Mrs. Leroy sat crouching on the fallen timber, her head still bent. Stooping behind her, he drew her toward him.
"They have forgotten us by now," he whispered, "can I make you forget them?"

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