me. 'John, I dare not take it now;
else I should be cheating you. I will try to love you dearly, even as
you deserve and wish. Keep it for me just till then. Something tells me
I shall earn it in a very little time. Perhaps you will be sorry then,
sorry when it is all too late, to be loved by such as I am.'

What could I do at her mournful tone, but kiss a thousand times the hand
which she put up to warn me, and vow that I would rather die with one
assurance of her love, than without it live for ever with all beside
that the world could give? Upon this she looked so lovely, with her dark
eyelashes trembling, and her soft eyes full of light, and the colour of
clear sunrise mounting on her cheeks and brow, that I was forced to turn
away, being overcome with beauty.

'Dearest darling, love of my life,' I whispered through her clouds of
hair; 'how long must I wait to know, how long must I linger doubting
whether you can ever stoop from your birth and wondrous beauty to a
poor, coarse hind like me, an ignorant unlettered yeoman--'

'I will not have you revile yourself,' said Lorna, very tenderly--just
as I had meant to make her. 'You are not rude and unlettered, John. You
know a great deal more than I do; you have learned both Greek and Latin,
as you told me long ago, and you have been at the very best school in
the West of England. None of us but my grandfather, and the Counsellor
(who is a great scholar), can compare with you in this. And though I
have laughed at your manner of speech, I only laughed in fun, John; I
never meant to vex you by it, nor knew that it had done so.'

'Naught you say can vex me, dear,' I answered, as she leaned towards
me in her generous sorrow; 'unless you say "Begone, John Ridd; I love
another more than you."'

'Then I shall never vex you, John. Never, I mean, by saying that. Now,
John, if you please, be quiet--'

For I was carried away so much by hearing her calling me 'John' so
often, and the music of her voice, and the way she bent toward me, and
the shadow of soft weeping in the sunlight of her eyes, that some of
my great hand was creeping in a manner not to be imagined, and far
less explained, toward the lithesome, wholesome curving underneath her
mantle-fold, and out of sight and harm, as I thought; not being her
front waist. However, I was dashed with that, and pretended not to mean
it; only to pluck some lady-fern, whose elegance did me no good.

'Now, John,' said Lorna, being so