I answered out of my astonishment:--"What do you want with HER?" Would
you believe it, for the next two minutes, he and I were shouting at each other
like maniacs--he vowing that it was the youngest sister he had meant to
propose to all along, and I telling him till my throat was hoarse that he must
have made a mistake! I can't account for this except, again, by the fact that
we were neither of us ourselves. Everything seemed to me like a bad dream--
from the stamping of the horses in the darkness to Saumarez telling me the
story of his loving Edith Copleigh since the first. He was still clawing my
shoulder and begging me to tell him where Edith Copleigh was, when another
lull came and brought light with it, and we saw the dust-cloud forming on the
plain in front of us. So we knew the worst was over. The moon was low down,
and there was just the glimmer of the false dawn that comes about an hour
before the real one. But the light was very faint, and the dun cloud roared
like a bull. I wondered where Edith Copleigh had gone; and as I was wondering
I saw three things together: First Maud Copleigh's face come smiling out of
the darkness and move towards Saumarez, who was standing by me. I heard the
girl whisper, "George," and slide her arm through the arm that was not clawing
my shoulder, and I saw that look on her face which only comes once or twice in
a lifetime--when a woman is perfectly happy and the air is full of trumpets
and gorgeous-colored fire and the Earth turns into cloud because she loves and
is loved.
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