d brow, that I was forced to turn
away, being overcome with beauty.

"Dearest darling, love of my life," I whispered through her clouds of
hair; "how long must I wait to know, how long must I linger doubting
whether you can ever stoop from your birth and wondrous beauty to a
poor, coarse hind like me, an ignorant unlettered yeoman--"

"I will not have you revile yourself," said Lorna, very tenderly--just
as I had meant to make her. "You are not rude and unlettered, John. You
know a great deal more than I do; you have learned both Greek and Latin,
as you told me long ago, and you have been at the very best school in
the West of England. None of us but my grandfather, and the Counsellor
(who is a great scholar), can compare with you in this. And though I
have laughed at your manner of speech, I only laughed in fun, John; I
never meant to vex you by it, nor knew that it had done so."

"Naught you say can vex me, dear," I answered, as she leaned towards
me in her generous sorrow; "unless you say 'Begone, John Ridd; I love
another more than you.'"

"Then I shall never vex you, John. Never, I mean, by saying that. Now,
John, if you please, be quiet--"

For I was carried away so much by hearing her calling me "John" so
often, and the music of her voice, and the way she bent toward me, and
the shadow of soft weeping in the sunlight of her eyes, that some of
my great hand was creeping in a manner not to be imagined, and far
less explained, toward the lithesome, wholesome curving underneath her
mantle-fold, and out of sight and harm, as I thought; not being her
front waist. However, I was dashed with that, and pretended not to mean
it; only to pluck some lady-fern, whose elegance did me no good.

"Now, John," said Lorna, being so quick that not even a lover could
cheat her, and observing my confusion more intently than she need have
done. "Master John Ridd, it is high time for you to go home to your
mother. I love your mother very much from what you have told me about
her, and I will not have her cheated."

"If you truly love my mother," said I, very craftily "the only way to
show it is by truly loving me."

Upon that she laughed at me in the sweetest manner, and with such
provoking ways, and such come-and-go of glances, and beginning of quick
blushes, which she tried to laugh away, that I knew, as well as if she
herself had told me, by some knowledge (void of reasoning, and the surer
for it), I knew quite well, while al