do nothing. The
best I could do was to hide my face; but the breast of that grey coat
was a strange hiding-place for it. With that inconsistent mingling of
small things with great in one's perceptions, which everybody knows, I
remember the soft feel of the fine grey cloth along with the clasp of
Thorold's arms and the touch of his cheek resting upon my hair. And we
stood so, quite still, for what seemed both a long and a short time,
in which I think happiness got the upper hand with me, and pain for
the moment was bid into the background. At last Thorold raised his
head and bade me lift up mine.

"Look up, darling," he said; "look up, Daisy! let me see your face.
Look up, Daisy--we have only a minute, and everything in the world to
say to each other. Daisy--I want to see you."

I think it was one of the most difficult little things I ever had in
my life to do, to raise my face and let him look at it; but I knew it
must be done, and I did it. One glance at his I ventured. He was
smiling at me; there was a flush upon his cheek; his eye had a light
in it, and with that a glow of tenderness which was different from
anything I had ever seen; and it was glittering, too, I think, with
another sort of suffusion. His hand came smoothing down my hair and
then touching my cheek while he looked at me.

"What are you going to do with yourself now?" he said softly.

"I am going on with my studies for another month or two."

"And you belong to me, Daisy?"

"Yes."

He bent his head and kissed my brow. There is an odd difference of
effect between a kiss on the lips and on the forehead, or else it was
a difference in the manner. This seemed a sort of taking possession or
setting a seal; and it gave me a new feeling of something almost like
awe, which I had never associated with the grey coat or with its
wearer before. Along with that came another impression that I suppose
most women know, and know how sweet it is; the sense of an enveloping
protection. Not that I had not been protected all my life; but my
mother's had been the protection of authority; my father's also, in
some measure; Dr. Sandford's was emphatically that of a _guardian_; he
guarded me a little too well. But this new thing that was stealing
into my heart, with its subtle delight, was the protection of a
champion; of one who set me and mine above all other interests or
claims in the world, and who would guard me as if he were a part of
myself, only stronger. Alto