The Following of the Star: A RomanceBarclay, Florence L. (Florence Louisa)
General
The Following of the Star: A Romance
Barclay, Florence L. (Florence Louisa)
Clergy -- Fiction; Inheritance and succession -- Fiction; Marriage -- Fiction; Missionaries -- Fiction
He did not wish Diana to read that passage in Ezekiel. It seemed to him,
she could not fail to know at once, that _she_ was the desire of his
eyes, if she read it. This would dawn on her, as it had dawned on him--a
sudden beam of blinding illumination--and there would be an end to any
service he might otherwise have rendered her.
"I would rather you did not read the passage," he said. "Much of it is
not applicable. In fact, it required logical deduction, and reasoning by
analogy, in order to arrive at the main point."
"And do you not consider me capable of logical deduction, or of
reasoning by analogy, Cousin David?"
He flushed.
"How stupidly I express myself. Of course I did not mean that.
But--there are things in the story, Miss Rivers, I do not wish you to
see."
Diana laughed.
"My good Cousin David, it is quite too late to begin shielding me! In
fact I never have been the carefully guarded 'young person.' I have
read heaps of naughty books, of which, I daresay, you have never even
heard!"
David winced. "Once more, I must have expressed myself badly," he said.
"I will not try again. But you must forgive me if I still decline to
give you the passage."
"Very well. But I shall hunt until I find it," smiled Diana, in playful
defiance. "Did you use a concordance last night, Cousin David? I did. I
looked out 'David'--pages and pages of it! I wondered whether you were
looking out 'Diana.'"
He smiled. "I should only have found 'Diana of the Ephesians,'" he said;
"and, though she fell mysteriously from heaven, she was quite unlike my
Lady of Mystery."
"Who arrived in a motor-car," laughed Diana. "Do you know, when you told
me you had called me--that, I thought it quite the most funnily
unsuitable name I had ever heard. I realised how the Hunt would roar if
they knew."
"You see," said David, "the Greek meaning of 'mystery' is: 'What is
known only to the initiated.'"
"And you were not yet initiated?" suggested Diana.
"No," replied David. "The Hunt was not initiated."
Diana looked at him keenly. Cousin David was proving less easy to
understand than she had imagined.
"Let us talk business," she said. "I will send for Mr. Inglestry this
afternoon. How immensely relieved he will be! He can manage all legal
details for us--the special license, and so forth. Of course we must be
married in London; and I should like the wedding to be in St. Botolph's,
that dear old church in Bishopsgate; because Saint Botolph is the patron
saint of travellers, and that church is one where people go to pray for
safe-keeping, before a voyage; or for absent friends who are travelling.
I can return there to pray for you, whenever I am in town. So shall it
be St. Botolph's, David?"
"If you wish it," he said.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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