She hardly understood his last impassioned appeal to her to confide in him--all--all that was troubling her. She stared miserably out upon the river. A steam launch went puffing up stream. Some one on deck was singing an apparently comic song to the strumming of a banjo; for shrill feminine laughter, mingled with ironic "bravos" was borne upon the breeze as the verse came to an end. Then the band engaged for the afternoon struck up a bright little march on the lawn the other side of the shrubbery. The mockery of the careless gaiety of ordinary life jarred her beyond endurance.
"Let us go away from here," she exclaimed, starting up, and glancing wildly at Vansittart.
His heart misgave him. This meant--he felt--that she was concealing something from him. Well! he must have patience, and bide his time.
"Presently," he said, in tender, but authoritative tones--and he drew her gently, but firmly, back on the seat by his side. "You must recover yourself first, darling--telling me of this wretched affair of your friend's has upset you! And really a girl who would be so reckless and foolish as to damn her whole life in advance by linking it legally with that of the first adventurer who came across her, is hardly worth your sympathy, by the way! Come, cheer up, or people may, will think--well, they will make a shrewd guess that there is something going on between us, and you don't want that, do you?"
"Just now, I don't seem to care!" she replied--and her glance was one of slight defiance. "You are too hard upon my poor friend--she was a dupe rather than--what was it? 'reckless, foolish'!"
"I am afraid I must plead guilty to having scant sympathy with dupes," he said, somewhat slightingly. Her manner had hurt him unconscionably.
"I suppose that is why you fell in with my idea of making dupes of my aunt and uncle!" She gave a shrill laugh, so unlike her ordinary sweet, pleasant laugh--the laugh that had haunted him those lonely nights and days in strange foreign lands, when he had striven to forget her--that his temporary annoyance gave way to concern.
"That is hardly kind!" he exclaimed, reproachfully. "Remember, it was not I who wished for this extraordinary secrecy! However, let that pass. One of the things I brought you here to tell you, dearest, is that I have hinted broadly to your uncle that I mean to make a dead set at you, and conquer all your various objections to marriage--and that I have his entire concurrence and sympathy! Is not that comforting?"
"It may be, to you," she said. "Honestly--dear"--she suddenly softened, and gave him a pathetic, beseeching glance--"I am good for nothing to-day--the past seems to have its clutch upon me, and I cannot feel with the present, or believe in a future! You must have patience with me----"
"You shall believe in a future, my angel!" he said emphatically--that look had swept away the cobwebs of doubt and vague suspicion, and he was once again the lover alone, as he drew her towards him and seemed to devour her with his eyes. "Listen, dearest--you have only to fix any day after a week is at an end, for our marriage, and the yacht will be ready. It is looking delightful--and I have already stocked it with a lot of things I think you will like. All I want now is one of your old frocks--to have some made by the pattern--and just one little shoe and glove"--he spoke hurriedly, somehow he shrank from such husband-like allusions as irreverent until she was actually and irrevocably Lady Vansittart--"may I, can I, have them, do you think? You see, I want you to be thoroughly, completely comfortable! And I do not mean the yacht to touch any port until we are absolutely compelled to--and then I shall choose some little station where one could not get ladies' dresses and things."