“It was this great fire, I suppose,” said Tony, as he knelt down beside her, and bathed her temples with some cold water that stood near. “Coming out of the cold air, a fire will do that.”
“Yes,” said she, trying to smile, “it was that.”
“I thought so,” said he, rather proud of his acuteness. “Let me settle you comfortably here;” and he lifted her up in his strong arms, and placed her in the chair where he had been sitting. “Dear me, Dolly, how light you are!”
She shook her head, but gave a smile, at the same time, of mingled melancholy and sweetness.
“I 'd never have believed you could be so light; but you 'll see what home and native air will do,” added he, quickly, and ashamed of his own want of tact. “My little mother, too, is such a nurse, I 'll be sworn that before a month's over you 'll be skipping over the rocks, or helping me to launch the coble, like long ago,—won't you, Dolly?”
“Go on with what you were telling me,” said she, faintly.
“Where was I? I forget where I stopped. Oh, yes; I remember it now. I went home as quick as I could, and I wrote Mark Lyle a letter. I know you 'll laugh at the notion of a letter by my hand; but I think I said what I wanted to say. I did n't want to disclaim all that I owed his family; indeed I never felt so deeply the kindness they had shown me as at the moment I was relinquishing it forever; but I told him that if he presumed, on the score of that feeling, to treat me like some humble hanger-on of his house, I'd beg to remind him that by birth at least I was fully his equal. That was the substance of it, but I won't say that it was conveyed in the purest and best style.”
“What did he reply?”
“Nothing,—not one line. I ought to say that I started for England almost immediately after; but he took no notice of me when I came back, and we never met since.”
“And his sisters,—do you suspect that they know of this letter of yours?”