'It was late upon a wretched night,' said Lizzie, 'when his eyes first looked at me in my old river-side home, very different from this.
His eyes may never look at me again. I would rather that they never did; I hope that they never may. But I would not have the light of them taken out of my life, for anything my life can give me.
I have told you everything now, my dear. If it comes a little strange to me to have parted with it, I am not sorry. I had no thought of ever parting with a single word of it, a moment before you came in; but you came in, and my mind changed.'
Bella kissed her on the cheek, and thanked her warmly for her confidence. 'I only wish,' said Bella, 'I was more deserving of it.'
'More deserving of it?' repeated Lizzie, with an incredulous smile.
'I don't mean in respect of keeping it,' said Bella, 'because any one should tear me to bits before getting at a syllable of it--though there's no merit in that, for I am naturally as obstinate as a Pig.
What I mean is, Lizzie, that I am a mere impertinent piece of conceit, and you shame me.'
Lizzie put up the pretty brown hair that came tumbling down, owing to the energy with which Bella shook her head; and she remonstrated while thus engaged, 'My dear!'
'Oh, it's all very well to call me your dear,' said Bella, with a pettish whimper, 'and I am glad to be called so, though I have slight enough claim to be. But I AM such a nasty little thing!'
'My dear!' urged Lizzie again.
'Such a shallow, cold, worldly, Limited little brute!' said Bella, bringing out her last adjective with culminating force.
'Do you think,' inquired Lizzie with her quiet smile, the hair being now secured, 'that I don't know better?'
'DO you know better though?' said Bella. 'Do you really believe you know better? Oh, I should be so glad if you did know better, but I am so very much afraid that I must know best!'
Lizzie asked her, laughing outright, whether she ever saw her own face or heard her own voice?
'I suppose so,' returned Bella; 'I look in the glass often enough, and I chatter like a Magpie.'
'I have seen your face, and heard your voice, at any rate,' said Lizzie, 'and they have tempted me to say to you--with a certainty of not going wrong--what I thought I should never say to any one.
Does that look ill?'
'No, I hope it doesn't,' pouted Bella, stopping herself in something between a humoured laugh and a humoured sob.
'I used once to see pictures in the fire,' said Lizzie playfully, 'to please my brother. Shall I tell you what I see down there where the fire is glowing?'
They had risen, and were standing on the hearth, the time being come for separating; each had drawn an arm around the other to take leave.
'Shall I tell you,' asked Lizzie, 'what I see down there?'
'Limited little b?' suggested Bella with her eyebrows raised.
'A heart well worth winning, and well won. A heart that, once won, goes through fire and water for the winner, and never changes, and is never daunted.'
'Girl's heart?' asked Bella, with accompanying eyebrows. Lizzie nodded. 'And the figure to which it belongs--'
Is yours,' suggested Bella.
'No. Most clearly and distinctly yours.'