"You should not be here," he stammered.
She laughed.
"How proud you are! Yes, and I love you for it! You think that I should desert you, as most women would do!" She laughed again. "If you were a pauper—"
"It is what your father called me," he said, gravely
She smiled up into his gloomy eyes defiantly, temptingly.
"What does it matter? I am rich—my father is rich—"
Stafford winced and his face flamed, but she had turned aside for a moment and did not see the effect of her words.
—"And you have more than wealth," she laughed. "I reminded him of that, and it sobered him. Oh, believe me! for all his pretended stoicism, my father values a title as keenly as most men, and at heart is anxious to see his daughter a countess."
Stafford bit his lip.
"I will take you home now," he said. Something in his voice told her that she had made a wrong step, that she had failed. With a cry she clung to him more tightly, and drawing back her head, scanned his face.