“Stop! stop!” he said, catching at her sleeve and pausing to look up gravely into her eyes as she, laughing, gasping, half-hysterical, looked down at him standing on the berme below. “Are you in earnest?” he demanded.
“Yes,—yes,—I shall give back the amulet.”
She seemed hardly to realize that it was his; that he had captured it in a mêlée; that it was now in his possession; that he had a word in the matter, a will to be consulted.
“I don’t understand—” he hesitated.
“Oh,—la,—you! You make no difference. I have worked a spell on you,—as you know!”
She laughed again, caught her breath with a gasp, and began once more to ascend swiftly through the fraise. But he was beside her in a moment. He caught her little hand trembling and cold in his.
“Arabella,” he cried, in agitated delight, “you know I worship you,—you know that you have indeed all my heart,—but only a subaltern,—I hardly dared to hope—”
“La! you needn’t bestir yourself to hope now! Sure, I didn’t say you had worked any spell on me.”
Not another word was possible to him, for the others had overtaken them, and it was in a twitter of laughter that she climbed through the embrasure, and in a flutter of delighted achievement that she breathlessly detailed the adventure to her father and the parson. Then hanging on the commandant’s arm she demurely paced to and fro along the moonlit rampart, now and again meeting Raymond’s gaze with a coquettish air of bravado which seemed to say:—
“Talk love to me now,—if you dare!”