Only a Girl's Love. Garvice Charles
Stella turned her face up to him.
"Yes, but I don't care to swim across."
He smiled, and went down to the bank, unfastened a boat, and leaping into it, called to her.
Stella sprang to her feet with the impulsive delight of a girl at the sight of a boat, when she had expected nothing better than rushes.
"Is it a boat—really?" she exclaimed.
"Come and see," he said.
She went down to the water's edge and looked at it.
"How did it come there?" she asked.
"I pay a fairy to drop a boat from the skies whenever I want it."
"I see," said Stella, gravely.
He laughed.
"How did you think I came across? Did you think I swam?" and he arranged a cushion.
She laughed.
"I forgot that; how stupid of me."
"Will you step in?" he said.
Stella looked back at her uncle, and hesitated a moment.
"He will assure you that I shall not drown you," he said.
"I am not afraid—do you think I am afraid?" she said, scornfully.
"Yes, I think that at this moment you are trembling with nervousness and dread."
She put her foot—he could not help seeing how small and shapely it was—on the gunwale, and he held out his hand and took hers; it was well he did so, for the boat was only a small, lightly built gig, and her sudden movement had made it rock.
As it was, she staggered slightly, and he had to take her by the arm. So, with one hand grasping her hand and the other her arm, he held her for a moment—for longer than a moment. Then he placed her on the cushion, and seating himself, took up the sculls and pushed off.
Stella leant back, and of course dropped one hand in the water. Not one woman out of twenty who ever sat in a boat can resist that impulse to have closer communion with the water; and he pulled slowly across the stream.
The sun shone full upon them, making their way a path of rippling gold, and turning Stella's hair into a rich brown.
Little wonder that, as he sat opposite her, his eyes should rest on her face, and less that, thus resting, its exquisite beauty and freshness and purity should sink into the soul of him to whom beauty was the one thing worth living for.
Unconscious of his rapt gaze, Stella leant back, her eyes fixed on the water, her whole attention absorbed by its musical ripple as it ran through her fingers.
In silence he pulled the sculls, slowly and noiselessly; he would not have spoken and broken the spell for worlds. Before him, as he looked upon her, rose the picture of which he had spoken to his sister last night.
"But more beautiful," he mused—"more beautiful! How lost she is! She has forgotten me—forgotten everything. Oh, Heaven! if one were to waken her into love!"
For an instant, at the thought, the color came into his face and the fire to his eyes; then a half guilty, half repentful feeling struck through him.
"No, it would be cruel—cruel: and yet to see the azure light shining in those eyes—to see those lips half parted with the breath of a great passion, would be worth—what? It would make amends for all that a man might suffer, though he died the next moment, if those eyes smiled, if those lips were upturned, for love of him!"
So lost were they that the touching of the boat and the bank made them start.
"So soon," murmured Stella. "How beautiful it is! I think I was dreaming."
"And I know that I was," he said, with a subtle significance, as he rose and held out his hand. But Stella sprang lightly on shore without accepting it. He tied up the boat and followed her; she was already on her knee, picking the yellow primroses.
Without a word, he followed her example. Sometimes they were so near together that she could feel his breath stirring her hair—so near that their hands almost met.
At last she sank on to the mossy ground with a laugh, and, pointing to her hat, which was full of the spring earth-stars, said laughingly:
"What ruthless pillage! Do not pick any more; it is wanton waste!"
"Are you sure you have plenty?" he said. "Why hesitate when there are such millions?"
"No, no more!" she said. "I feel guilty already!"
He glanced at the handful he had gathered, and she saw the glance and laughed.
"You do not know what to do with those you have, and still want more. See, you must tie them in bundles.
"Show me," he said, and he threw himself down beside her.
She gathered them up into bundles, and tied them with a long stem of fern, and he tried to do the same, but his hands, white and slender as they were, were not so deft as hers, and he held the huge bundle to her.
"You must tie it," he said.
She laughed and put the fern round, but it broke, and the primroses fell in a golden shower over their hands. They both made a grasp at them, and their hands met.
For a moment Stella laughed, then the laugh died away, for he still held her hand, and the warmth of his grasp seemed stealing upward to her heart. With something like an effort she drew her hand away, and sprang to her feet.
"I—I must go," she said. "Uncle will wonder where I have gone," and she looked down at the water with almost frightened eagerness.
"He will know you are here, quite safe," he said. "Wait, do not go this moment. Up there, above our heads, we can see the river stretching away for miles. It is not a step; will you come?"
She hesitated a moment, then she turned and walked beside him between the trees.
A step or two, as he said, and they reached a sort of plateau, crowned by a moss-grown rock, in which some rough steps were hewn. He sprang up the steps and reached the top, then bent down and held out his hand.
Stella hesitated a moment.
"It will repay your trouble; come," he said, and she put her hand in his and her foot on the first step, and he drew her up beside him.
"Look!" he said.
An exclamation of delight broke from Stella's lips.
"You are not sorry you came?"
"I did not think it would be so lovely," she said.
He stood beside her, not looking at the view, but at her dark eyes dilating with dreamy rapture—at her half-parted lips, and the sweet, clear-cut profile presented to him.
She turned suddenly, and to hide the look of admiration he raised his hand and pointed out the objects in the view.
"And what is that little house there?" asked Stella.
"That is one of the lodges," he said.
"One of the lodges—one of your own lodges, you mean?" she asked.
He nodded lightly, "Yes."
"And all this between here and that lodge belongs to you?"
"No, not an inch," he said, laughing. "To my father."
"It is a great deal," she said.
"Too much for one man, you think?" he said, with a smile. "A great many other people think so too. I don't know what you would think if you knew how much we Wyndwards have managed at one time or the other to lay our acquiring grasp on. This is one of our smallest estates," he said, simply.
Stella looked at the view dreamily.
"One