Anne Bronte: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

53. CHAPTER LIII (continued)

'If you loved as I do,' she earnestly replied, 'you would not have so nearly lost me - these scruples of false delicacy and pride would never thus have troubled you - you would have seen that the greatest worldly distinctions and discrepancies of rank, birth, and fortune are as dust in the balance compared with the unity of accordant thoughts and feelings, and truly loving, sympathising hearts and souls.'

'But this is too much happiness,' said I, embracing her again; 'I have not deserved it, Helen - I dare not believe in such felicity: and the longer I have to wait, the greater will be my dread that something will intervene to snatch you from me - and think, a thousand things may happen in a year! - I shall be in one long fever of restless terror and impatience all the time. And besides, winter is such a dreary season.'

'I thought so too,' replied she gravely: 'I would not be married in winter - in December, at least,' she added, with a shudder - for in that month had occurred both the ill-starred marriage that had bound her to her former husband, and the terrible death that released her - 'and therefore I said another year, in spring.'

'Next spring?'

'No, no - next autumn, perhaps.'

'Summer, then?'

'Well, the close of summer. There now! be satisfied.'

While she was speaking Arthur re-entered the room - good boy for keeping out so long.

'Mamma, I couldn't find the book in either of the places you told me to look for it' (there was a conscious something in mamma's smile that seemed to say, 'No, dear, I knew you could not'), 'but Rachel got it for me at last. Look, Mr. Markham, a natural history, with all kinds of birds and beasts in it, and the reading as nice as the pictures!'