"Yes, once," he replied, rather reluctantly, inwardly perturbed at the turn the conversation was taking.
"Oh, how was it?" she questioned, interestedly, dropping her tone of banter instantly. "Was it a fellow-officer?"
"No."
"A sailor, then?" anxiously.
"No; a young lady," desperately.
"Oh, a young lady!" she exclaimed in dismay, with a note of disappointment in her voice that she endeavored in vain to suppress, and which he was very glad indeed to recognize.
"Yes; one summer at Cape May. She got beyond her depth in the surf, and I swam out and brought her ashore without any great difficulty. Not a very romantic story, is it? Not half as much as—I mean, not at all——"
"Oh, I think it very romantic indeed," answered this child of nature, whose notions of romance and love and other things were drawn from the antique novels of her grandfather's library; "if I had saved any one's life I should——"
She stopped and blushed furiously as the natural answer to her impetuous remark sprang into her mind.
"I will finish for you," interrupted Revere, eagerly, his resolution of reticence recorded in his determination of the previous night growing decidedly faint in the face of the fascination she exercised over him. "I——"