Chapter 40

ought to have made up my mind to it, and have borne my sufferings with a patient heart." (The ~Legend~ again!) "And yet when the shock ~does~ come, it is very hard to be borne."

Miss Patty's bright eyes were dilated with wonder, and she again thought of Mr. Verdant Green in connection with champagne. Mr. Poletiss was still taking his pirate through all sorts of flats and sharps, and chromatic imitations of King George.

"But, what ~is~ this shock?" asked Miss Patty. "Perhaps I can relieve it; and I ought to do so if it came through my means."

"You cannot help me," said Verdant. "My suspicions were confirmed by your words, and they have sealed my fate."

"But you have not yet told me what those words were, and I must really insist upon knowing," said Miss Patty, who had begun to look very seriously perplexed.

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

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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! why, when you told me that he ~had~ been accepted, was not that sufficient for me to know? - to know that all my love had been given to one who was another's, and that all my hopes were blighted! was not this sufficient to crush me, and to change the colour of my life?" And Verdant's face showed that, though he might be quoting from his ~Legend~, he was yet speaking 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 made acquainted with Frederick's attachment, you might then have checked your own. I did not ever dream of this!" And Miss Patty, who had turned pale, and trembled with agitation, 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 always wish to be the same. She will be sadly grieved 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 you mean?"

"Have you not been telling me of your secret love for her?" answered Miss Patty, who again turned her thoughts to the champagne.

"Love for ~her~? No! nothing 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 telling me that you were engaged to him?"

"Telling you 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 whom were ~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 how we have been playing at cross questions and crooked answers. When I asked you about Mr. Delaval, my thoughts were wholly of you, and I spoke of you, and not of your sister, as you imagined; 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 stumbling-block of his doubts was now removed, and his way lay clear before him. Then, after a momentary pause to nerve his determination, and without further prelude, or beating 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 many hours of thought, was at length 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 me?" He had imagined that he should put the question to her when they were alone in some quiet room; or, better still, when they were wandering together in some sequestered garden 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 him, and his ears assaulted with a songster's praises of piracy and murder. Strange 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 determination, while the laughter and busy talking of others assist to fill up awkward pauses of agitation in the converse of the loving couple.

Despite the heat, Miss Patty's cheeks paled for a moment, as Verdant put to her that question, "Do you love me?" Then a deep blush stole over them, as she whispered "I do."

What need for more? what need for pressure of hands or lips, and vows of love and constancy? What need even for the elder and more desperate of the Miss Morkins to maliciously suggest that Mr. Poletiss - who had concluded, amid a great display of approbation (probably because it ~was~ concluded) his mild piratical chant, and his imitations of King George the

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Third - should call upon Mr. Verdant Green, who, as she understood, was a very good singer? "And, dear me! where could he have gone to, when he was here just now, you know! and, good gracious! why there he was, under the cart-tilt - and well, I never was so surprised - Miss Martha Honeywood with him, flirting now, I dare say? shouldn't you think so?"

No need for this stroke of generalship! No need for Miss Letitia Jane Morkin to prompt Miss Fanny Green to bring her brother out of his retirement. No need for Mr. Frederick Delaval to say "I thought you were never going to slip from your moorings!" Or for little Mr. Bouncer to cry, "Yoicks! unearthed at last!" No need for anything, save the parental sanction to the newly-formed engagement. Mr. Verdant Green had proposed, and had been accepted; and Miss Patty Honeywood could exclaim with Schiller's heroine, "Ich habe gelebt und geliebet! - I have lived, and have loved!"