“Yes, child,” I answered. “How easily—how easily.”
Her pulses answered to my tone, I could feel again. She slipped upon her knees before me, and clasping her hands looked up, dumbly questioning, into my face.
“You are so simple, ma mignonette; I hardly know how to tell you,” I began pitifully.
“Tell me! O, what, Diana? I am frightened.”
“I wish you to be. Patty”—I took her two entreating hands into one of mine, and with the other made a significant gesture—“all this—these little costly gifts—has it never occurred to you, child, that they are bribes”— I stopped.
“To me?” she whispered, with a whole heart of astonishment.
“To your honour, child.”
“To—?”
She gulped, and turned as pale as death.
“He has promised to show you his Richmond cottage?”