"Afraid, dear heart, afraid?"
Far off sounded the musick and far off the laughter of the world.
"Afraid that misery will come of it."
"Misery, my beloved? I will cherish you for ever."
"Amor! Amor! I'm afraid. Something, I cannot say what, I cannot explain my feelings, but something frightens me, I feel—oh! I feel as if I were walking in a dark wet garden. I feel as if—as if the laurels and the evergreens held a knife."
Vernon clasped her to him.
"My dear and my dear, they hold no more than an arrow; the arrow that has pierced our hearts."
Certainly our villain was play-acting, but he was his own audience and that juxtaposition is as near to sincerity as even your hero attains.
"You won't betray your Phyllida?"
The appeal caught fire from the flaming cheeks of a maid and burned a way direct, poignant, passionate, right through the lustre and tinsel of his emotional costume.