'_Me_, Robert?' repeated Dorothea, in her clear, childish tones, looking up with her frank yet timid eyes. 'Are you _sure_?'
'I have been sure ever since I first saw you,' said Henley, smiling down at her, 'at Kensington, three years ago. Do you remember the snowball, Dolly?'
Then Dolly's eyes fell, and she stood with a tender, puzzled face, listening to her first tale of love. She suddenly pulled away her hand, shy and blushing.
The swans had hardly passed beyond the garden-terrace; the fisherman had only thrown his line once again; Dolly's mamma had time to shift her parasol; that was all. Henley waited, with his handsome head a little bent. He was regaining his composure; he knew too much of his cousin's uncompromising ways to be made afraid by her silence. He stood pulling at his watch, and looking at her--at the straight white figure amid dazzling blue and green; at the line of the sweet face still turned away from him.
'I thought you would have understood me better?' he said, reproachfully.
Still Dolly could not speak. For a moment her heart had beat with an innocent triumph, and then came a doubt. Did she love him--could she love him? Had he then cared for her all this time, when she herself had been so cold and so indifferent, and thinking so little of him? Only yesterday she had told Rhoda she would never marry. Was it yesterday? No, it was to-day, an hour ago.... What had she done to deserve so much from him?--what had she done to be so overprized and loved? At the thought quick upspringing into her two grey eyes came the tears, sparkling like the diamonds in Rhoda's cross.
'I never thought you thought,' Dolly began. 'Oh, Robert! you have been in earnest all this time, and I only--only playing.'
'Don't be unhappy,' said her cousin. 'It was very natural; I should not have wished it otherwise. I did not want to speak to you till I had something worth your acceptance.'
Did the explanations of true love ever yet run smooth? 'Dolly!' cried Mrs. Palmer, from under the tree.
'Hulloa, Robert!' shouted George, coming across the grass towards them.
'Oh, Robert!' said Dorothea, earnestly, unexpectedly, with a sudden resolution to be true--true to him and to herself, 'thank you a thousand times for what you have told me: only it mustn't be--I don't care enough for you, dear Robert! You deserve----'