The Midnight Queen - Page 66/177

"I will have no middle courses--either hating or loving it must be!

Leoline! Leoline!" (bending over her, and imprisoning both hands this

time) "do say you love me!"

"I am captive in your hands, so I must, I suppose. Yes, Sir Norman, I do

love you!"

Every man hearing that for the first time from a pair of loved lips

is privileged to go mad for a brief season, and to go through certain

manoeuvers much more delectable to the enjoyers than to society at

large. For fully ten minutes after Leoline's last speech, there was

profound silence. But actions sometimes speak louder than words; and

Leoline was perfectly convinced that her declaration had not fallen on

insensible ears. At the end of that period, the space between them on

the couch had so greatly diminished, that the ghost of a zephyr would

have been crushed to death trying to get between them; and Sir Norman's

face was fairly radiant. Leoline herself looked rather beaming; and she

suddenly, and without provocation, burst into a merry little peal of

laughter.

"Well, for two people who were perfect strangers to each other half

an hour ago, I think we have gone on remarkably well. What will Mr.

Ormiston and Prudence say, I wonder, when they hear this?"

"They will say what is the truth--that I am the luckiest man in England.

O Leoline! I never thought it was in me to love any one as I do you."' "I am very glad to hear it; but I knew that it was in me long before I

ever dreamed of knowing you. Are you not anxious to know something about

the future Lady Kingsley's past history?"

"It will all come in good time; it is not well to have a surfeit of joy

in one night.

"I do not know that this will add to your joy; but it had better be told

and be done with, at once and forever. In the first place, I presume I

am an orphan, for I have never known father or mother, and I have never

had any other name but Leoline."

"So Ormiston told me."

"My first recollection is of Prudence; she was my nurse and governess,

both in one; and we lived in a cottage by the sea--I don't know where,

but a long way from this. When I was about ten years old, we left it,

and came to London, and lived in a house in Cheapside, for five or six

years; and then we moved here. And all this time, Sir Norman you will

think it strange--but I never made any friends or acquaintances, and

knew no one but Prudence and an old Italian professor, who came to

our lodgings in Cheapside, every week, to give me lessons. It was not

because I disliked society, you must know; but Prudence, with all

her kindness and goodness--and I believe she truly loves me--has been

nothing more or less all my life than my jailer."