"Yes; whether you think you will or no."
Catherine turned her dreamy eyes on him.
"You have had a good master. Why did you not come to me sooner?"
She was thinking more of him than of herself, and in fact paying too little heed to her words. But she had no sooner uttered this inadvertent speech than she felt she had said too much; she blushed a rosy red, and hid her face in her hands in the most charming confusion.
"Sweetest, it is not an hour too late, as you do not love another," was stout George Neville's reply.
But nevertheless the cunning rogue thought it safest to temporize, and put his coy mistress off her guard. So he ceased to alarm her by pressing the question of marriage, but seduced her into a charming talk, where the topics were not so personal, and only the tones of his voice and the glances of his expressive eyes were caressing. He was on his mettle to please her by hook or by crook, and was delightful, irresistible. He set her at ease, and she began to listen more, and even to smile faintly, and to look through the window a little less perseveringly.
Suddenly the spell was broken for a while.
And by whom?
By the other.
Ay you may well stare. It sounds strange, but it is true, that the poor forlorn horseman, hanging like a broken man, as he was, over his tired horse, and wending his solitary way from her he loved, and resigning the field, like a goose, to the very rival he feared, did yet (like the retiring Parthian) shoot an arrow right into that pretty boudoir, and hit both his sweetheart and his rival; hit them hard enough to spoil their sport, and make a little mischief between them—for that afternoon, at all events.