'There is only one thing,' said Laura, timidly; 'would it not be better if mamma knew?'
'Laura, I have considered that, but remember you are not bound; I have never asked you to bind yourself. You might marry to-morrow, and I should have no right to complain. There is nothing to prevent you.'
She exclaimed, as if with pain.
'True,' he answered; 'you could not, and that certainty suffices me. I ask no more without your parents' consent; but it would be giving them and you useless distress and perplexity to ask it now. They would object to my poverty, and we should gain nothing; for I would never be so selfish as to wish to expose you to such a life as that of the wife of a poor officer; and an open engagement could not add to our confidence in each other. We must be content to wait for my promotion. By that time'--he smiled gravely--'our attachment will have lasted so many years as to give it a claim to respect.'
'It is no new thing.'
'No newer than our lives; but remember, my Laura, that you are but twenty.'
'You have made me feel much older,' sighed Laura, 'not that I would be a thoughtless child again. That cannot last long, not even for poor little Amy'
'No one would wish to part with the deeper feelings of elder years to regain the carelessness of childhood, even to be exempted from the suffering that has brought them.'
'No, indeed.'
'For instance, these two years have scarcely been a time of great happiness to you.'
'Sometimes,' whispered Laura, 'sometimes beyond all words, but often dreary and oppressive.'
'Heaven knows how unwillingly I have rendered it so. Rather than dim the brightness of your life, I would have repressed my own sentiments for ever.'
'But, then, where would have been my brightness?'
'I would, I say, but for a peril to you. I see my fears were unfounded. You were safe; but in my desire to guard you from what has come on poor Amy, my feelings, though not wont to overpower me, carried me further than I intended.'
'Did they?'
'Do not suppose I regret it. No, no, Laura; those were the most precious moments in my life, when I drew from you those words and looks which have been blessed in remembrance ever since; and doubly, knowing, as I do, that you also prize that day.'
'Yes--yes;--'
'In the midst of much that was adverse, and with a necessity for a trust and self-control of which scarce a woman but yourself would have been capable, you have endured nobly--'