Part 40 (1/2)

”And, can you have forgotten!” was the reply ”Do you not remember, that, as we came up the hill, I put a certain

[278 ADVENTURES OF MR VERDANT GREEN]

question to you about Mr Delaval having proposed and having been accepted?”

”Yes! I remember it very well! And, what then?”

”And, what then!” echoed Mr Verdant Green, in the greatest wonder at the young lady's calmness; ”what then! hen you told me that he ~had~ been accepted, was not that sufficient for iven to one as another's, and that all hted! was not this sufficient to crush e the colour of ht be quoting fro from his heart

”Oh! I little expected this!” faltered Miss Patty, in real grief; ”I little thought of this Why did you not speak sooner to some one - to me, for instance - and have spared yourself this misery? If you had been earlier ht then have checked your own I did not ever dream of this!” And Miss Patty, who had turned pale, and treitation, could not restrain a tear

”It is very kind of you thus to feel for me!” said Verdant; ”and all I ask is, that you will still remain my friend”

”Indeed, I will And I am sure Kitty will alish to be the sarieved to hear of this; for, I can assure you that she had no suspicion you were attached to her”

”Attached to HER!” cried Verdant, with vast surprise ”What ever do youain turned her thoughts to the cha of the kind”

”What! and not spoken about your grief when I told you that Frederick Delaval had proposed to her, and had been accepted?”

”Proposed to ~her~?” cried Verdant, in a kind of dreamy swoon

”Yes! to whom else do you suppose he would propose?”

”To ~you~!”

”To ME!”

”Yes, to you! Why, have you not been tellingyou that ~I~ was engaged to Fred!” rejoined Miss Patty

”Why, what could put such an idea into your head? Fred is engaged to Kitty You asked me if it was not so; and I told you, yes, but that it was a secret at present Why, then of ere ~you~ talking?”

[AN OXFORD FRESHMAN 279]

”Of ~you~!”

”Of ~me~?”

”Yes, of you!” And the scales fell from the eyes of both, and they saw their mutual mistake

There was a silence, which Verdant was the first to break

”It seems that love is really blind I now perceive hoe have been playing at cross questions and crooked answers When I asked you about Mr Delaval, hts holly of you, and I spoke of you, and not of your sister, as you iined; and I fancied that you answered not for your sister but for yourself When I spoke of my attachment, it did not refer to your sister, but to you”

”To me?” softly said Miss Patty, as a delicious tremor stole over her ”To you, and to you alone,” answered Verdant The great stu-block of his doubts was now removed, and his way lay clear before him Then, after a momentary pause to nerve his deter about the bush, he said, ”Patty - my dear Miss Honeywood - I love you! do you love me?”

There it was at last! The dreaded question over which he had passed so th spoken The elaborate sentences that he had devised for its introduction, had all been forgotten; and his artificial flowers of oratory had been exchanged for those simpler blossoms of honesty and truth - ”I love you - do you love ined that he should put the question to her when they were alone in soether in soarden walk or shady lane; and, now, here he had unexpectedly, and undesignedly, found his opportunity at a pic-nic dinner, with half a hundred people close beside hister's praises of piracy and e accompaniments to a declaration of the tender passion! But, like others before him, he had found that there was no such privacy as that of a crowd - the fear of interruption probably adding a spur to deter of others assist to fill up aard pauses of agitation in the converse of the loving couple