She paced up and down the large kitchen, where everything was polished and bright; the fire-light glowed on the splendid face and figure—the face with its unutterable beauty, its restless longing, its troubled desires.
Some fear for the future of the beautiful, restless, passionate girl came over the man, who watched her with anxious eyes. It began to dawn upon him, that if he were to shut a bright-eyed eagle up in a cage, it would never be happy, and it was very much the same kind of thing to shut this lovely, gifted girl in a quiet farmhouse.
"You will be married soon," he said, with a clumsy attempt at comfort, "and then you will be more content."
She flashed one look of scorn from those dark, lustrous eyes that should have annihilated him. She stopped before him, and threw back her head with the gesture of an injured queen.
"May I ask," she said, "whom you suppose I will marry?"
He looked rather frightened, for he began to perceive he had made some mistake, though he could not tell what; he thought all young girls liked to be teased about sweethearts and marriage; still he came valiantly to the front.
"I mean that you will surely have a sweetheart some day or other," he said, consolingly, though the fire from those dark eyes startled him, and her scarlet lips trembled with anger.
"I shall have a sweetheart, you think, like Jennie Barnes or Lily Coke. A sweetheart. Pray, whom will it be, do you think?"
"I know several of the young farmers about here who would each give his right hand to be a sweetheart of yours."
She laughed a low, contemptuous laugh that made him wince.