I have God to love, and Jesus to love,
and you to love, and my own father to love! When you know him, you
will see how good a man can be without having been brought up like
you!--Oh, Donal, do say something, or I shall cry, and crying kills
me!"
She was sitting on a low chair, with the sunlight across her
lap--for she was again in the sunny Garland-room--and the firelight
on her face. Donal knelt gently down, and laid his hands in the
sunlight on her lap, just as if he were going to say his prayers at
his mother's knee. She laid both her hands on his.
"I have something to tell you," he said; "and then you must speak
again."
"Tell me," said Arctura, with a little gasp.
"When I came here," said Donal, "I thought my heart so broken that
it would never love--that way, I mean--any more. But I loved God
better than ever: and as one I would fain help, I loved you from the
very first. But I should have scorned myself had I once fancied you
loved me more than just to do anything for me I needed done. When I
saw you troubled, I longed to take you up in my arms, and carry you
like a lovely bird that had fallen from one of God's nests; but
never once, my lady, did I think of your caring for my love: it was
yours as a matter of course. I once asked a lady to kiss me--just
once, for a good-bye: she would not--and she was quite right; but
after that I never spoke to a lady but she seemed to stand far away
on the top of a hill against a sky.
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