I did not reply. Now that it had come to this pass as I wished, I was frightened, as I have said.
But Joyce was looking up at me with an appealing look in her eyes. I stooped down and kissed her.
"You dear old thing," I said; "I'm so glad. I hoped he had—I have hoped all along he would."
"I thought you wished it," she said, with child-like simplicity.
I laughed.
"Of course I knew from the very beginning that he would fall in love with you," I said.
"Oh, Margaret, don't say that!" pleaded she. And then, after a pause, with a little sigh she added, "I should have thought he would have been wiser than to fall in love with a country girl, when there must be so many town girls who are better fitted to him."
"Nonsense!" cried I. "The woman who is fitted to a man is the woman whom he loves."
"Do you think so?" murmured she, diffidently.
"Why, of course," I cried, warming as I went on, and forgetting my own doubts in laughing at hers. "A man doesn't marry a woman for the number of languages that she speaks, and that kind of thing—at least not a man like Captain Forrester. I don't know how you can misjudge him so. Don't you believe that he loves you?"