"How could I refuse when Lady Blakeney advised? She is the kindest and dearest friend I possess. She and your friend ought to know one another. Will you not tell me who he is?"
"I will present him to you, dear heart, as soon as we are married," he replied with awkward evasiveness. Then suddenly he exclaimed with boyish enthusiasm: "I can't believe it! I can't believe it! It is the most extraordinary thing in the world...."
"What is that, milor?" she asked.
"That you should have cared for me at all. For of course you must care, or you wouldn't be sitting here with me now ... you would not have consented ... would you?"
"You know that I do care, milor," she said in her grave quiet way. "How could it be otherwise?"
"But I am so stupid and so slow," he said naïvely. "Why! look at me now. My heart is simply bursting with all that I want to say to you, but I just can't find the words, and I do nothing but talk rubbish and feel how you must despise me."
Once more that humorous little smile played for a moment round Yvonne de Kernogan's serious mouth. She didn't say anything just then, but her delicate fingers gave his hand an expressive squeeze.
"You are not frightened?" he asked abruptly.
"Frightened? Of what?" she rejoined.
"At the step you are going to take?"