“Conciliate him! Oh, how you know him!” She pressed her hands over her face as she spoke, and when she withdrew them the cheeks were scalded with tears.
“Come, come, Loo, this is scarcely like yourself.”
“There, it's over now,” said she, smiling, with a half-sad look, as she pushed her hair back, as though to suffer the cool air to bathe her forehead. “Oh dear!” sighed she out, “if I only could have foreseen all the perils before me, I might have borne with George Ogden, and lived and died what the world calls respectable.”
He gave a little sigh too, which might have meant that he agreed with her, or that the alternative was a hard one, or that respectability was a very expensive thing for people of small means, or a little of all three together, which was most probable, since the Captain rarely dealt in motives that were not sufficiently mixed.
“And now, papa,” said she, “use your most ingenious devices to show me how I am to answer all these engagements, and while I meet Mr. Winthrop in Switzerland, contrive also to be on guard here, and on outpost duty with Mr. Ludlow Paten.”
“You 'll do it, Loo,—you 'll do it, or nobody else will,” said he, sipping his iced drink, and gazing on her approvingly.
“What would you say to Bregenz for our rendezvous with Winthrop?” said she, bending over the map. “It is as quiet and forgotten a spot as any I know of.”
“So it is, Loo; and one of the very few where the English never go, or, at least, never sojourn.”
“I wish we could manage to find a small house or a cottage there. I should like to be what dramatists call 'discovered' in a humbly furnished chamber, living with my dear old father, venerable in years and virtues.”
“Well, it ought not to be difficult to manage. If you like, I 'll set off there and make the arrangements. I could start this evening.”