I Forbid the Banns! — page 104: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

94 “J FORBID THE BANNS!” were to be congratulated upon their successful wooing of the Sabine maidens; but there was nothing particularly mystic about such a wooing. It was not a rushing of kin- dred souls together—the mingling of sister spirits. It did very well for the Romans, and for the Sabines also ; and it produced a race of some distinction in their day. It would not do for the latter years of the nineteenth century, how- ever. Mrs. Hardy smiled away, first at Bertha, then at Julian, then at both of them, then at the much sounding sea, then at the poached eggs on the breakfast table. “ Dearest,” said fulian when he found himself alone with Bertha in the empty saloon after breakfast—‘“dearest, have you told your aunt that we are——”’ He was going to say “engaged,” but he hesitated—the word sounded com- monplace—“ bound to one another” was the phrase that he found after a pause of a few seconds. ‘‘ Have you told her that we are bound to one another ?”’ “T have told her nothing,” said Bertha. “ Our bond concerns ourselves alone.” “ Then why did she go about smiling in that suggestive way?” said he. “I actually feared that she was about to offer me her congratulations—just as if we were the ordi- nary lovers of society.”’ “Oh, no,” said Bertha. ‘It could never come to that.” ‘But how can she know that ” Again he hesitated, and this time the exact spiritual equivalent forthe mundane phrase which was in his mind did not at once occur to him. He could not blurt out “that there is anything between us.’ There was nothing between them—that was just the point on which most emphasis should be laid. Their souls had mingled. “She can know nothing; I have said no word to her,” answered Bertha, without waiting for him to find the exact phrase of which he was in search. EOMMIELYOOlKS EC)