"Why did he say that?" I asked, with my usual stupidity.
"I am sure I cannot say," and looking straight at me, she let go the barbed shaft, that lies hidden in fair eyes for unwary mortals.
"Sit down," she commanded, sinking into the chair I had vacated. "Sit down, Rufus, please!" This with an after-shot of alarm from the heavy lashes; for if a woman's eyes may speak, so may a man's, and their language is sometimes bolder.
"Thanks," and I sat down on the arm of that same chair.
For once in my life I had sense to keep my tongue still; for, if I had spoken, I must have let bolt some impetuous thing better left unsaid.
"Rufus," she began, in the low, thrilling tones that had enthralled me from the first, "do you know I was your sole nurse all the time you were delirious?"
"No wonder I was delirious! Dolt, that I was, to have been delirious!" thought I to myself; but I choked down the foolish rejoinder and endeavored to look as wise as if my head had been ballasted with the weight of a patriarch's wisdom instead of ballooning about like a kite run wild.
"I think I know all your secrets."
"Oh!" A man usually has some secrets he would rather not share; and though I had not swung the full tether of wild west freedom—thanks solely to her, not to me—I trembled at recollection of the passes that come to every man's life when he has been near enough the precipice to know the sensation of falling without going over.
"You talked incessantly of Miriam and Mr. Hamilton and Father Holland."