He thought perhaps she would interrupt him here, and cry out, as he himself would have done, what did that matter, so long as they were together? But she did not do this. She was quite silent, waiting for him to go on.
“But now,” he continued, “it will be different. We can enjoy ourselves a little. I don’t suppose we shall be rich even now.”
“No,” she said, quietly, “you will not be rich.”
He turned and looked into her face, but in the darkness he could see nothing. And then he was used to these little prudential ways she had, and the superior knowledge which she claimed of the world.
“Perhaps not rich, but well off, don’t you think?” he said, with a little timidity, “to begin upon; and then there would be Penton in the distance. Penton is a noble place. All the time of the ball I was thinking of you, how you would have liked it, and how much more beautiful it would have been had you been there. We must give a ball some time, when we come home--”
“You mean,” she said, for he made a pause, “when you succeed; but your father is not an old man, and that may be a long, long time.”
“I hope so,” said Walter, fervently; “loving you makes me love everybody else better. I hope it may be a long, long time.”
Again she made no remark--which she might have done, perhaps saying she hoped so too; but no doubt she thought it unnecessary to say what was so certain and evident.
“But,” he cried, pressing her arm again closer to his side, “I didn’t mean anything so lugubrious, I meant when I brought you home. That will be a triumph, darling! They will put up arches for us, and come out to meet us. It shall be a summer evening, not cold like this. We shall have a pair of white horses lit for a bride, though you will be a little more than a bride by that time, Emmy?”
“Shall I?” she said, with a tone of mockery in her laugh.
“Why, of course,” he cried, bending over her, “since it is winter now! You don’t suppose it is to be put off so long. Why, you say yourself you are a will-o’-the-wisp. You would have disappeared by that time if I left you to yourself.”
“That’s true enough,” she said, with another soft suppressed laugh, which made him turn and look at her again, for there seemed a meaning in it more than met the ear.