Chapter 8 - Page 2

more without wearying you. You know that I may have to go to England
soon, and go I will not until I have asked your father what favour he
will show us. On the street, he gets out of my way as if I had the
plague. Tell me at what hour I may call and see him in his house. I will
then ask him point blank for your hand, and he is so candid that I shall
have in a word Yes or No on the matter. Do not keep me waiting longer
than seven this very night. I have a fever of anxiety, and I shall not
grow better, but worse, until I settle our engagement. Oh, my peerless
Cornelia, pearl and flower of womanhood, I speak your speech, I think
your thought; you are the noblest thing in my life, and to remember you
is to remember the hours when I was the very best and the very happiest.
Your image has become part of me, your memory is a perfume which makes
sweet my heart. I wish this moment to give you thousands and thousands
of kisses. Bid me come to you soon, very soon, sooner than seven, if
possible, for your love is my life. Send your answer to my city lodging.
I shall follow this letter and be impatiently waiting for it. Oh,
Cornelia, am I not ever and entirely yours?

"GEORGE HYDE."

It was not more than eight o'clock in the morning when he wrote this
letter, and as soon as possible he despatched a swift messenger with it
to Cornelia. He hoped that she would receive it soon after the Doctor
had left his home for his usual round of professional visits; then she
might possibly write to him at once, and if so, he would get the letter
very soon after he reached the city.

Probably Madame Hyde divined something of the importance and tenor of a
missive sent in such a hurry of anxious love, so early in the day, but
she showed neither annoyance nor curiosity regarding it. In the first
place, she knew that opposition would only strengthen whatever resolve
her son had made; in the second place, she was conscious of a singular
restlessness of her own spirit. She was apprehending change, and she
could think of no change but that call to leave her home and her native
land which she so much dreaded. If this event happened, then the affairs
of Joris would assume an entirely different aspect. He would be obliged
to leave everything which now interested him, and he could not live
without interests; very well, then, he would be compelled to accept such
as a new Fate thrown into his new life. She had a great faith in
circumstances. She knew that in the long run every one wrote beneath
that potent word, "Your obedient servant." Circumstances would either
positively deny all her son's hopes, or they would so powerfully aid
them that opposition would be useless; and she mentally bowed herself to
an influence so