"Only wait a little longer," she said, one day, as she sat listening to his arguments, and looking up at him so earnestly;--"you don't know papa so well as I do. In most things he is so kind; but I fear in this he would not be so."
"Why do you think so, dearest Blanche?" he replied, taking her hand in his; "he seems to like me, and is continually asking me to come to Pendrea-house. What objection can he have? have you ever heard him say he disliked me, or----"
"Oh! no! never," she replied; "but Maud and papa seem to hold the same opinions on many points; and she has spoken to me often of the disparity of age, and seemed so utterly against it, that I fear papa will think so too."
"It shall be exactly as you wish," said he; "but I would much rather know my fate at once, than wait in suspense;--what good end can it answer to delay it?"
"Oh! don't talk in that way," replied Blanche, bursting into tears;--"you know how much I should wish it settled, too; but then, if papa should be angry, and refuse to give his consent, I should never see you again. I cannot bear to think of that."
Poor little innocent timid Blanche! she knew not what troubles her timidity was bringing on them both. It was her first love; and, childlike, she thought only of her present pleasure. She felt like one in a pleasant dream, gliding through the air on azure clouds, wafted gently onwards by a zephyr's breeze, with her lover ever by her side to protect her from harm; and she feared lest the slightest change in their present position should cause an angry storm to rise, and overturn all their blissful happiness. She did not know, poor girl, in her ignorance, of the changes and chances that are continually going on in the world, where the greatest pleasures and the severest pains and trials last but for a season, and they are gone, and old Time keeps on the even tenor of his way, and pains and pleasures live only in the memory, and fade away as time rolls on, leaving, in the end, but a faint shadow of the past.
Blanche knew not this; and, anxious to secure present happiness, she induced her lover, in the very innocence of her young heart, by tears and entreaties, to delay his application to her father for a time, in defiance of his better judgment; for he was older, and knew the world much better than this poor innocent girl, but still he yielded, and they loved on in secret.