Salome was turning over the pages of Dore’s Milton.

“Close the volume, now, Miss Levison,” Lord Arondelle said at length, uttering the formal words with a tone and look of such reverential tenderness as to seem a caress.

Salome shut the book, and looked up to read the open volume of his eloquent face; but her eyes instantly sank beneath the gaze of ardent passion that met them.

“Listen to me, Salome, my beloved; for I love you, and have loved you ever since the first moment when I met the beautiful spirit beaming through your sweet eyes—­’Sweetest eyes were ever seen!’ Dear eyes! look on me!”

Salome, for all her profound and ardent affections, was still a very shy maiden.  She wished to raise her eyes to his; she wished to pour her heart out to him; to let him have the comfort of knowing how perfectly she loved him, how utterly she was his own.  But she could not look at him, she could not speak to him as yet.  Her dark eyelashes drooped to her crimson cheeks.

“My beloved, do you hear me?  I am telling you how I have loved you since I first met your heavenly eyes.  This is no lover’s rhapsody, my own, for your eyes are heavenly in their spiritual beauty.  And they have haunted me, Salome, like the eyes of a guardian angel ever since they first looked upon me.  Daily they would have drawn me to your side but for my wrecked and ruined state,” he said, with a half suppressed sigh.

His look, his tone, and, more than all, his allusion to the calamity of his house, reached her soul, and broke the spell of reserve by which she was bound.

“Oh, do not say that you are ruined!” she cried, in a voice thrilled and thrilling with profound emotion.  “Do not think that you are ruined. You could never be ruined. Nothing could ruin you.  It is not in the power of fate to ruin a man like YOU.  And if you loved me when you first met my eyes it was because you read in them the soul that was created yours!  And if these eyes have haunted you ever since it was because this soul has been always longing, yearning, aspiring towards yours!” And she dropped her face in her hands and wept for pure joy.

“Salome, Salome, can this be indeed true?  Can I have been so blessed?  Am I indeed so happy?  Then is this abundant compensation for all that I have lost in this world!  Heavenly consolation for all I have suffered on earth!  Speak again, oh, my dearest!  Tell me once more, for I can scarcely realize my happiness!  Speak again, beloved, for your words are life to me!” he exclaimed, with profound emotion.

“Yes, I will tell you all!” she said, wiping away her joyful tears and looking up.  “I will tell you everything for it is your right!  You have made me so happy to-day!  I loved you from the beginning.  First, I loved the magnanimous, self-sacrificing man who, at the age of twenty-one years, with a brilliant future before him, could renounce all his prospects to give peace to his father’s latter years.  I loved you then, Lord Arondelle, before I knew what manner of man you looked!”