mpatience she smiled. She urged the old story of decorum--that
bug-bear which deters so many from bliss until the opportunity for
bliss has forever gone by. I had most imprudently made it known among my
friends, she observed, that I desired her acquaintance--thus that I did
not possess it--thus, again, there was no possibility of concealing the
date of our first knowledge of each other. And then she adverted, with a
blush, to the extreme recency of this date. To wed immediately would be
improper--would be indecorous--would be outre. All this she said with a
charming air of naivete which enraptured while it grieved and convinced
me. She went even so far as to accuse me, laughingly, of rashness--of
imprudence. She bade me remember that I really even know not who she
was--what were her prospects, her connections, her standing in society.
She begged me, but with a sigh, to reconsider my proposal, and termed
my love an infatuation--a will o' the wisp--a fancy or fantasy of the
moment--a baseless and unstable creation rather of the imagination
than of the heart. These things she uttered as the shadows of the sweet
twilight gathered darkly and more darkly around us--and then, with a
gentle pressure of her fairy-like hand, overthrew, in a single sweet
instant, all the argumentative fabric she had reared.

I replied as best I could--as only a true lover can. I spoke at length,
and perseveringly of my devotion, of my passion--of her exceeding
beauty, and of my own enthusiastic admiration. In conclusion, I dwelt,
with a convincing energy, upon the perils that encompass the course
of love--that course of true love that never did run smooth--and thus
deduced the manifest danger of rendering that course unnecessarily long.

This latter argument seemed finally to soften the rigor of her
determination. She relented; but there was yet an obstacle, she said,
which she felt assured I had not properly considered. This was a
delicate point--for a woman to urge, especially so; in mentioning it,
she saw that she must make a sacrifice of her feelings; still, for me,
every sacrifice should be made. She alluded to the topic of age. Was I
aware--was I fully aware of the discrepancy between us? That the age
of the husband, should surpass by a few years--even by fifteen or
twenty--the age of the wife, was regarded by the world as admissible,
and, indeed, as even proper, but she had always entertained the belief
that the years of the wife should nev