“And under whose charge will you leave him?” Lady Blandish inquired.

She had emerged from the temple, and stood beside Sir Austin on the upper steps, under a clear summer twilight.

“Madam!” he took her hand, and his voice was gallant and tender, “under whose but yours?”

As the baronet said this, he bent above her hand, and raised it to his lips.

Lady Blandish felt that she had been wooed and asked in wedlock.  She did not withdraw her hand.  The baronet’s salute was flatteringly reverent.  He deliberated over it, as one going through a grave ceremony.  And he, the scorner of women, had chosen her for his homage!  Lady Blandish forgot that she had taken some trouble to arrive at it.  She received the exquisite compliment in all its unique honey-sweet:  for in love we must deserve nothing or the fine bloom of fruition is gone.

The lady’s hand was still in durance, and the baronet had not recovered from his profound inclination, when a noise from the neighbouring beechwood startled the two actors in this courtly pantomime.  They turned their heads, and beheld the hope of Raynham on horseback surveying the scene.  The next moment he had galloped away.

CHAPTER XIV

All night Richard tossed on his bed with his heart in a rapid canter, and his brain bestriding it, traversing the rich untasted world, and the great Realm of Mystery, from which he was now restrained no longer.  Months he had wandered about the gates of the Bonnet, wondering, sighing, knocking at them, and getting neither admittance nor answer.  He had the key now.  His own father had given it to him.  His heart was a lightning steed, and bore him on and on over limitless regions bathed in superhuman beauty and strangeness, where cavaliers and ladies leaned whispering upon close green swards, and knights and ladies cast a splendour upon savage forests, and tilts and tourneys were held in golden courts lit to a glorious day by ladies’ eyes, one pair of which, dimly visioned, constantly distinguishable, followed him through the boskage and dwelt upon him in the press, beaming while he bent above a hand glittering white and fragrant as the frosted blossom of a May night.

Awhile the heart would pause and flutter to a shock:  he was in the act of consummating all earthly bliss by pressing his lips to the small white hand.  Only to do that, and die! cried the Magnetic Youth:  to fling the Jewel of Life into that one cup and drink it off!  He was intoxicated by anticipation.  For that he was born.  There was, then, some end in existence, something to live for! to kiss a woman’s hand, and die!  He would leap from the couch, and rush to pen and paper to relieve his swarming sensations.  Scarce was he seated when the pen was dashed aside, the paper sent flying with the exclamation, “Have I not sworn I would never write again?” Sir Austin had shut that safety-valve.