To a maid who loved as well as Mary Mahony did, there was a touching pathos in the simple earnestness of this confession;--aye, and eloquence, too, for surely truth is the living spirit of eloquence. How long she might have been inclined to play the coquette I cannot resolve, but the idea of her lover's leaving her put all _finesse_ to flight, and she said, in a low tone, which yet found an echo, and made a memory in his heart: "Remmy! dear Remmy, you must not leave me. If you go, my heart goes with you, for I like you, poor as you are, better than the richest lord in the land, with his own weight of gold and jewels on his back."
What more she might have said puzzles conjecture--for these welcome words were scarcely spoken, when all further speech was arrested by an ardent kiss from Remmy. Oh! the first, fond kiss of mutual love! what is there of earth with so much of the soft and gentle balm of heaven?
There they stood, by the ruins of that old castle, the world all forgot. There they whispered, each to each, that deep passion with which they had so long been heart-full. The maiden had gentle sighs and pleasant tears--but these last, Remmy gallantly kissed away. Very wrong, no doubt, for her to have permitted him to do so, and, in truth, she sometimes exhibited a shadow of resistance. There was, in sooth,
"A world of whispers, mixed with low response, Sweet, short, and broken, as divided strains Of nightingales."
"And you won't think the worse of me, Remmy, for being so foolish as to confess how I love you?"
"Is it me, life of my heart? not unless you say that it was foolish to love _me_. Sure, they were the happiest words I ever heard."
"And you will love me always, even as now?"
"Ah, Mary, I see that you are joking now."
"Not I, darling; let those who have heavy hearts, and no hope, do that same."
Much more, was spoken, no doubt. Very tender confessions and confidences, in truth, which I care not to repeat, for such are of the bright holidays of youth and love, and scarcely bear to be reported as closely as an oration in the Senate, or a lawyer's harangue at Nisi Prius, in a case of Breach of Promise. Such tender confessions and confidences resemble those eastern flowers which have a sweet perfume on the soil to which they are native, but lose the fragrance if you remove them to another clime.