A little embarrassed by the request, she would have declined, but he said:
“Do not refuse, Florence—I may never ask aught from you again.”
Her confusion was greatly increased by the low, deep tones in which he spoke. Scarcely knowing what she did, she took up her hat, threw a light mantle over her shoulders, and stepped out into the garden. He followed, and, drawing her hand through his arm, led her in the contrary direction to that he had proposed.
If Florence was conscious of this, she made no remark. She knew that the arm on which she rested trembled strangely, and that the eyes looking down upon her had in them the same soft light, the same tender affection, that beamed in them when Frank Dormer held her to his breast the day he saved her from destruction on the banks of the Coquet.
As if he, too, were thinking of that moment, he said:
“Do you remember how you wished you had something to give me? And how I answered that if you were the same Florence on my return that I left I would ask you for what would be more precious to me than aught else the world can contain? You were too young and childish to comprehend me then, or to guess how the only hope I carried away with me was of returning to ask you to be mine.”
“Why do you persist in referring to these things?” said Florence resentfully.
“Do you bid me be silent? Do you bid me leave you? Or will you not say ‘Stay, and leave me no more?’”
She flashed one look of glad surprise at the earnest speaker; then, checked by the recollection of his strange behavior, exclaimed:
“Should you ask me this—you, who have yourself acknowledged——”