"No, I won't have any one else, I'm determined. I'll agree to anything she demands." Here a sunbeam, and the diamonds darted forth to meet one another. The flash made him wink. "If she'll only undertake to reign and rule, and bring up the children--for she'll do it well, and love them too--I'm a very domestic fellow, I shall be fond of her. Yes, I know she'll soon wind me round her little finger." Here, remembering the sweetness of liberty, he sighed. "I'll lay the matter before her this morning. I shall not forget the respect due to her and to myself." He half laughed. "She'll soon know well enough what I'm come for; and if I stick fast, she will probably help me!" He shut up the ring. "She never has had the least touch of romance in her nature, and _she knows_ that _I know_ she didn't love her first husband a bit." He then looked at himself, or rather at his coat, in a long glass--it fitted to perfection. "If this crash had not brought me to the point, I might have waited till somebody else won her. There goes the breakfast bell. Well, I think I am decidedly glad on the whole." CHAPTER XXIX. UNHEARD-OF LIBERTIES. "If he come not then the play is marred: it goes not forward, doth it?" _Midsummer Night's Dream._ Miss Christie Grant, sitting with Emily at ten o'clock in the morning, heard a ring at the bell, which she thought she knew. She pricked up her head to listen, and as it ceased tinkling she bustled out of the room. The first virtue of a companion in Miss Christie Grant's view, was to know how to be judiciously absent. "Mr. Mortimer." Emily was writing, when she looked up on hearing these words, and saw John Mortimer advancing. Of course she had been thinking of him, thinking with much more hope than heretofore, but also with much more pride. When he had stood remote, the object of such an impassioned, and to her, hitherto, such an unknown love, which transformed him and everything about him, and imparted to him such an almost unbearable charm--a power to draw her nearer and nearer without knowing it, or wanting her at all--she had felt that she could die for him, but she had not hoped to live for him, and spend a happy life at his side. She did not hope it yet, she only felt that a blissful possibility was thrown down before her, and she might take it up if she could. She knew that this strange absorbing love, which, like some splendid flower, had opened out in her path, was the one supreme blossom of her life--that life which is all too short for the unfolding of another such. But the last few hours had taught her something more, it was now just possible that he might pretend to gather this flower--he had something to learn then before he could wear it, he must love her, or she felt that her own love would break her heart.