“I am not a midshipman,” he said, with injured dignity.
“You have risen very quickly.”
“I was always a lieutenant, from the very first time you saw me.”
“You were never a lieutenant when you inflicted that insult on me: that was a midshipman’s trick.”
“Will you never forget or forgive?”
“I have forgiven it, or how would the affair have ended?”
“Yes, indeed you did, Signorina,” said Will, with warm gratitude in his voice. “Will you forget it?”
“I am not sure that I can promise that; but I have offered you my friendship.”
“That is the same thing,” he said, giving her such a look as I should not have thought any woman could resist. In all that assemblage there was no one with high breeding and high courage writ so plainly on his face; and he was so young, so beautiful, so fair in colouring. Even his eyes, his proud blue eyes, had for once lost their hardness.
“No, it is not the same thing; I do not want to forget it.”