But to-night--to-night! there were other things to say. The foolish boy caught her arm and drew it within his as soon as she appeared. “Are you warm, are you comfortable?” he whispered. “I have so much to tell you; everything is changed. You must not hurry in again in a moment, there is so much to say.”
“What is changed? If you have tired of your romancing that would be the best thing,” she said.
“I shall never tire of my romancing. It is all coming right; everything is clearing up. It will be almost too easy. The course of true love this time will be quite smooth.”
“Ah, that’s what I like,” she cried, “but how is it to be? You don’t mean to say that your father and mother--they would never be such fools--”
“Fools!” he cried, pressing her arm to his side; “they’re not fools, but they know nothing about it; it is something--something that has happened to me.”
“I am glad,” she said, composedly, “that you have not told them; it would be a wild thing to do. And I know what young men’s parents are; they will sometimes pretend to consent to set you against it--they think that if there is no opposition it will die away of itself.”
“It will never die away,” he said, “opposition or no opposition; but, Emmy, it isn’t a penniless fellow that you’re going to marry. We sha’n’t have to live on my little bit of an allowance--I’ve got--money of my own.”
She gave a little suppressed scream of pleasure.
“Yes; that has nothing to do with my father; that nobody can interfere with. It comes from my old relative, old Sir Walter. He has left me ten thousand pounds.”
“Ten thousand pounds!” she repeated, with a quickly drawn breath, then paused a little; “that is a very nice sum of money. I am very glad you’ve got all that. How much will it bring in by the year?”
He was a little checked in his enthusiasm by this inquiry; and, to tell the truth, it was not a question he had considered or knew very well how to answer.
“You might get five hundred a year for it if you were very very lucky; but I don’t think,” she said, “you will get so much as that.”
“At all events,” he said, somewhat sobered, “it will be my own; it will be something I can spend as I please, and with which nobody will have any right to interfere. We could have existed perhaps on my allowance; but it would have been hard upon my darling cooping her up in a small cottage, with scarcely money enough to live upon--”