It was very difficult, he felt, to be sentimental with her. She had turned to the window, and was looking out again at the flowers; one little white hand played impatiently with a branch of guelder roses that came peeping in.
"I am jealous of those flowers," said the captain; "will you look at me instead of them?"
She raised her beautiful eyes, and looked at him so calmly, with so much conscious superiority in her manner, that the captain felt "smaller" than ever.
"You are talking nonsense to me," she said, loftily; "and as I do not like nonsense, will you tell me what you have to say?"
The voice was calm and cold, the tones measured and slightly contemptuous; it was very difficult under such circumstances to be an eloquent wooer, but the recollection of Darrell Court and its large rent-roll came to him and restored his fast expiring courage.
"I want to ask a favor of you," he said; and the pleading expression that he managed to throw into his face was really creditable to him. "I want to ask you if you will be a little kinder to me. I admire you so much that I should be the happiest man in all the world if you would but give me ever so little of your friendship."
She seemed to consider his words—to ponder them; and from her silence he took hope.
"I am quite unworthy, I know; but, if you knew how all my life long I have desired the friendship of a good and noble woman, you would be kinder to me—you would indeed!"
"Do you think, then, that I am good and noble?" she asked.
"I am sure of it; your face——"