"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."