“To see Mr. Faradeane!” he repeated, as if he could not quite realize it even yet. “But what for, in the name of Heaven?”
“Must I tell you that?” she asked, still looking at him steadily, though her lips quivered. “I want to tell him that I know he did not commit this—that he is charged with, and that——”
She stopped.
“It’s quite impossible!” he said, gravely. “Quite—quite! Don’t ask me, I beg of you!”
“But I do ask you,” she murmured, her eyes melting with entreaty. “Why is it impossible? You are governor, and can do what you like”—the colonel was too much troubled to smile—“and you said you would not refuse me.”
“But,” he retorted, soothingly, with a look of relief, “fortunately, it isn’t for me to grant or refuse. It is for Mr. Faradeane, and he has informed me that he will see no one.”
“I do not care for that,” she said, in the tone which only a woman knows how to use. “He will see me, because I shall not wait to ask him!”
The poor colonel tugged at his mustache.
“But—good Heaven, my dear girl, does your father know?—surely he doesn’t know that you have come on this—forgive me—mad errand?”
“No, he doesn’t know,” said Olivia, steadily. “But if he had known, he would have let me. Colonel Summerford, you know I have been very ill?” she purred, bending toward him with a piteous entreaty in her lovely eyes. “You don’t want to send me away to be as bad again?”