"Stay with you!" she cried, "that will I! and you and I from the window
will superintend our dear young ones. Alas!" she said, with a
languishing look, "how lonely the house will seem when you are bereft of
your daughter."
Mr. Ives sighed deeply.
Outside in the gloaming, Betty Ives and her young lover walked slowly
backwards and forwards under the orchard trees.
"No father, no mother, no sisters!" she said, looking up into his face.
"No one to love, no one to love you!"
"I do not know whether I am to be pitied," he answered with a light
laugh. "My life has been one of strange vicissitudes. No, no, sweet Bet;
I have often thanked God that no one shared my life."
"But you will never do so again," she said earnestly.
"Sweetheart!" he answered. "Until you have once drunk of the cup of
happiness you know not what it is; but once tasted, you can ill spare it
thenceforth."
"Ah, some day you will tell me about this life of yours--will you not?"
"Some day, my heart, when you and I are alone together in the fair woods
of Belton--when you are my precious wife, and when days have passed on,
and our full trust and confidence each in the other is proved and
strengthened by time. But not now, beloved, not now."
"Have you known griefs, sorrows?"
"A few."
"Happiness?"
"Yes, and triumphs often.
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