"A very sweet and fair nothing. Now that you have flattered me, listen while I tell you what you are. To begin, you are, without exception, the loveliest girl that ever smiled in the sunshine. You have a royal dowry of purity, truth, innocence and simplicity, than which no queen ever had greater. All the grace and music of the world, to my mind, are concentrated in you. I can say no more, sweet. I find that words do not express my meaning. All the unworthiness is on my side--not on yours."
"But," she remonstrated, "some day you will be a very rich, great man, will you not?"
"I am what the world calls rich, now," he replied, gravely. "And--yes, you are right, Hyacinth--it is most probable that I may be Baron Chandon of Chandon some day. But what has that to do with it, sweet?"
"You should have a wife who knows more than I do--some one who understands the great world."
"Heaven forbid!" he said, earnestly. "I would not marry a worldly woman, Cynthy, if she brought me Golconda for a fortune. There is no one else who could make such a fair and gentle Lady Chandon as you."
"I am afraid that you will be disappointed in me afterward," she remarked, falteringly.
"I am very willing to run the risk, my darling. Now you have been quite cruel enough, Cynthy. We will even go so far as to suppose you have faults; I know that, being human, you cannot be without them. But that does not make me love you less. Now, tell me, will you be my wife?"
She looked up at him with sweet, shy grace. "I am afraid you think too highly of me," she opposed, apologetically; "in many things I am but a child."
"Child, woman, fairy, spirit--no matter what you are--just as you are, I love you, and I would not have you changed; nothing can improve you, because, in my eyes, you are perfect. Will you be my wife, Hyacinth?"
"Yes," she replied; "and I pray that I may be worthy of my lot."
He bent down and kissed the fair flushed face, the sweet quivering lips, the white drooping eyelids.
"You are my own now," he said--"my very own. Nothing but death shall part us."
So they sat in silence more eloquent than words; the faint sound of the music came over the trees, the wind stirred the vine leaves--there never came such another hour in life for them. In the first rapture of her great happiness Hyacinth did not remember Claude, or perhaps she would have told her lover about him, but she did not even remember him. Over the smiling heaven of her content no cloud, however light, sailed--she remembered nothing in that hour but her love and her happiness.