present. I am sure you would not willingly injure me; but if you speak to me, or of me, again in that way, you will injure me, injure me so much that I shall be forced to leave Greshamsbury in my own defence. I know you are too generous to drive me to that.'
And so the interview had ended. Frank, of course, went up stairs to see if his new pocket-pistols were all ready, properly cleaned, loaded, and capped, should he find after a few days' experience, that prolonged existence was unendurable.
However, he managed to live through the subsequent period; doubtless with the view of preventing any disappointment to his father's guests.
CHAPTER VII.
THE DOCTOR'S GARDEN.
Mary had contrived to quiet her lover with considerable propriety of demeanour. Then came on her the somewhat harder task of quieting herself. Young ladies, on the whole, are perhaps quite as susceptible of the softer feelings as young gentlemen are. Now Frank Gresham was handsome, amiable, by no means a fool in intellect, excellent in heart; and he was, moreover, a gentleman, being the son of Mr. Gresham of Greshamsbury. Mary had been, as it were, brought up to love him. Had aught but good happened to him, she would have cried as for a brother. It must not therefore be supposed that when Frank Gresham told her that he loved her, she had heard it altogether unconcerned.
He had not, perhaps, made his declaration with that propriety of language in which such scenes are generally described as being carried on. Ladies may perhaps think that Mary should have been deterred, by the very boyishness of his manner, from thinking at all seriously on the subject. His 'will you, won't you—do you, don't you?' does not sound like the poetic raptures of a highly-inspired lover. But, nevertheless, there had been warmth, and a reality in it not in itself repulsive; and Mary's anger—anger? no, not anger—her objections to the declaration were probably not based on the absurdity of her lover's language.
We are inclined to think that these matters are not always discussed by mortal lovers in the poetically-passionate phraseology which is generally thought to be appropriate for their description. A man cannot well describe that which he has never seen nor heard; but the absolute words and acts of one such scene did once come to the author's knowledge. The couple were by no
