Page 239 - The snake's pass

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BOG-FISHING AND SCHOOLING. 227
it is that you wish, so that I may try to judge with all
my heart."
" Arthur
! I want you to let me go to school—to a
good school for a while—a year or two before we are
married. Oh ! I should work so hard ! I should' try so
earnestly to improve—for I should feel that every hour
of honest work brought me higher and nearer to your
!
level
My heart was more touched than even my passion
gave me words to tell— and I tried, and tried hard, to tell
her what I felt—and in my secret heart a remorseful
thought went up : " What have I done in my life to be
"
worthy of so much love !
Then, as we sat hand in hand, we discussed how it
was to be done—for that it was to be done we were both
agreed. I had told her that we should so arrange it
that she should go for awhile to Paris, and then to
Dresden, and finish up with an English school. That
she could learn languages, and that amongst them
would be Italian ; but that she would not go to Italy
until we went together—on our honeymoon. She bent
her head and listened in silent happiness ; and when
I spoke of our journey together to Italy, and how we
would revel in old-world beauty — in the softness and
light and colour of that magic land—the delicate porce-
lain of her shell-like ear became tinged with pink, and
I bent over and kissed it. And then she turned and
threw herself on my breast, and hid her face.
As I looked I saw the pink spread downward and