u promised not to interrupt me; is this fair behaviour?
Well, let me see where I left off--oh, that my heart would have broken.
Upon that point, I will say no more, lest you should grow conceited,
John; if anything could make you so. But I do assure you that half
London--however, upon that point also I will check my power of speech,
lest you think me conceited. And now to put aside all nonsense; though I
have talked none for a year, John, having been so unhappy; and now it is
such a relief to me--'

'Then talk it for an hour,' said I; 'and let me sit and watch you. To me
it is the very sweetest of all sweetest wisdom.'

'Nay, there is no time,' she answered, glancing at a jewelled timepiece,
scarcely larger than an oyster, which she drew from her waist-band; and
then she pushed it away, in confusion, lest its wealth should startle
me. 'My uncle will come home in less than half an hour, dear: and you
are not the one to take a side-passage, and avoid him. I shall tell him
that you have been here; and that I mean you to come again.'

As Lorna said this, with a manner as confident as need be, I saw that
she had learned in town the power of her beauty, and knew that she could
do with most men aught she set her mind upon. And as she stood there,
flushed with pride and faith in her own loveliness, and radiant with the
love itself, I felt that she must do exactly as she pleased with every
one. For now, in turn, and elegance, and richness, and variety, there
was nothing to compare with her face, unless it were her figure.
Therefore I gave in, and said,--

'Darling, do just what you please. Only make no rogue of me.'

For that she gave me the simplest, kindest, and sweetest of all kisses;
and I went down the great stairs grandly, thinking of nothing else but
that.

CHAPTER LXVIII

JOHN IS JOHN NO LONGER

It would be hard for me to tell the state of mind in which I lived for a
long time after this. I put away from me all torment, and the thought of
future cares, and the sight of difficulty; and to myself appeared,
which means that I became the luckiest of lucky fellows, since the world
itself began. I thought not of the harvest even, nor of the men who
would get their wages without having earned them, nor of my mother's
anxiety and worry about John Fry's great fatness (which was growing upon
him), and how she would cry fifty times in a day, 'Ah, if our John would
only come home, how different everything would look!'