She faltered, in answer to his wild, eager look.  “Was I ever so rude before?  What right have I to tear your letter unless I—­”

The characteristic full stop, and, above all, the heaving bosom, the melting eye, and the red cheek, were enough even for poor simple David.  Heaven seemed to open on him.  His burning kisses fell on the sweet hands that had torn his death-warrant.  No resistance.  She blushed higher, but smiled.  His powerful arm curled round her.  She looked a little scared, but not much.  He kissed her sweet cheek:  the blush spread to her very forehead at that, but no resistance.  As the winged and rapid bird, if her feathers be but touched with a speck of bird-lime, loses all power of flight, so it seemed as if that one kiss, the first a stranger had ever pressed on Lucy’s virgin cheek, paralyzed her eel-like and evasive powers; under it her whole supple frame seemed to yield as David drew her closer and closer to him, till she hid her forehead and wet eyelashes on his shoulder, and murmured: 

“How could I let you be unhappy?!”

Neither spoke for a while.  Each felt the other’s heart beat; and David drank that ecstasy of silent, delirious bliss which comes to great hearts once in a life.

Had he not earned it?

CHAPTER XXIX.

By some mighty instinct Mrs. Wilson knew when to come in.  She came to the door just one minute after Lucy had capitulated, and, turning the handle, but without opening the door, bawled some fresh directions to Jenny:  this was to enable Lucy to smooth her ruffled feathers, if necessary, and look Agnes.  But Lucy’s actual contact with that honest heart seemed to have made a change in her; instead of doing Agnes, she confronted (after a fashion of her own) the situation she had so long evaded.

“Oh, nurse!” she cried, and wreathed her arms round her.

“Don’t cry, my lamb!  I can guess.”

“Cry?  Oh no; I would not pay him so poor a compliment.  It was to say, ‘Dear nurse, you must love Mr. Dodd as well as me now.’”

The dame received this indirect intelligence with hearty delight.

“That won’t cost me much trouble,” said she.  “He is the one I’d have picked out of all England for my nursling.  When a young man is kind to an old woman, it is a good sign; but la! his face is enough for me:  who ever saw guile in such a face as that.  Aren’t ye hungry by this time?  Dinner will be ready in about a minute.”

“Nurse, can I speak to you a word?”

“Yes, sure.”

It was to inquire whether she would invite Miss Dodd.

“She loves her brother very dearly, and it is cruel to separate them.  Mr. Dodd will be nearly always here now, will he not?”

“You may take your davy of that.”

In a very few minutes a note was written, and Mrs. Wilson’s eldest son, a handsome young farmer, started in the covered cart with his mother’s orders “to bring the young lady willy-nilly.”