"Oh, about going home? But I shall often think of you all here, and wish the old fairy stories were true, where you could be transported elsewhere in a moment. I think I did truly believe in them once."
How charming she was in that absolute simplicity, the exquisite, innocent, glowing face too frank for concealment. He had no business to probe her secret, and yet he must know.
"Oh, I meant, you will not come back to us the same. You will have learned the lesson of love, and I hope—you will be very happy."
"I don't understand"—a puzzled line settling in her fair brow. "Oh!" suddenly relieved, and then half smiling, "did you think," and then her face crimsoned to its utmost capacity, "that I, that Dr. Langdale—it is a mistake. We were dear friends in childhood, we are warm friends now. For, you see, he has been like a little bit of Pittsburg to me, and sometimes, when I was longing for the dear ones at home, it was comforting to talk them over. And he has no thought of marrying in a long, long while. He means to do so much first."
Was she a finished coquette by the grace of nature? Young men were not given to consideration of this or that when the bewildering passion seized them. But coquette or not, a sharp, overmastering knowledge seized him. Once she had advised him to marry and bring in the household a charming girl. She recognized that his duty would be to M. de Ronville while he lived. He knew that, too, if he would not prove himself an ingrate. And here was the charming girl.
He looked at her so long and steadily that there came faint colors in her face, growing deeper, the lines about her mouth showed tremors, the bronze-fringed lids drooped over her eyes, and she turned away. But the delicious half-bashful movement set his pulses aflame.
"Daffodil," and he caught her hand, "if there is no other among these young men, or even at home, may I not sue for a little favor? I know it surprises you; then perhaps I am too old to win a young girl's regard, love I mean——"
"Oh, you must not," she interrupted. "For I think you hardly like me—you did not at first. And then, I—well—I do not mean to marry. You know there was the——"
"Which simply has no weight in your life."
"But you see, I thought I loved him. Oh, I did love him. And I was so happy. Why, I would have gone to the end of the world with him! Only when one deceives you, when one dares not tell the whole truth, and when one cannot, does not want to give up wealth and station, what was love is some way crushed out. But how could I tell if any new love was the right thing? I might be mistaken again. And there are fickle women in the world I have heard, who can love many times. I don't desire to be one of them. Maybe it is only friendship I am fitted for."