"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. Then he began to talk to her of the life that lay before them. "We must live so that others may be the better for our living, Cynthy. Should it happen that you become Lady Chandon, we will have a vast responsibility on our hands." She looked pleased and happy. "We will build schools," she said, "almshouses for the poor people; we will make every one glad and happy, Adrian." "That will be a task beyond us, I fear," he rejoined, with a smile, "but we will do our best." "I must try to learn every thing needful for so exalted a position," she observed, with a great sigh of content. "You must be very quick about it, darling," he said. "I am going to presume upon your kindness. It is not enough to know that I have won you, but I want to know when you will be mine." She made no reply, and he went on. "I do not see why we need wait--do you, Cynthy?" "I do not see why we need hurry," she replied. "I can give you a reason for that--I want you; my life will be one long sigh until I can say in very truth that you are my wife. Will you let me tell Lady Vaughan this evening, that I have been successful?" She clung to him, her hand clasping his arm. "Not to-night," she said, softly. "Adrian, let me have this one night to myself to think it all over." "It shall be just as you like, my darling; I will tell her to-morrow. Now, Cynthy, this is the 19th of July--why should we not be married in two months from to-day?" Ah, why not? She said nothing. The wind, that whispered so many secrets to the trees, did not tell them that. CHAPTER XV.