Chetwoode's handsome lips part in a pleased smile: he turns his face gladly, willingly, to hers.
"Why do you ask permission of your slave, O Queen of Hearts?" he answers, softly, catching the infection of her gayety. He gazes at her with unchecked and growing admiration, his whole heart in his eyes; telling himself, as he has told himself a thousand times before, that to-night she is looking her fairest.
Her cheeks are flushed from her late drive; one or two glittering golden lovelocks have been driven by the rough wind from their natural resting-place, and now lie in gracious disorder on her white forehead; her lustrous sapphire eyes are gleaming upon him, full of unsubdued laughter; her lips are parted, showing all the small even teeth within.
She stoops toward him, and clinking her glass against his with the prettiest show of bonne camaraderie, whispers, softly:
"Come, let us be happy together."
"Together!" repeats Guy, unsteadily, losing his head, and rising abruptly from his seat as though to go to her. She half rises also, seriously frightened at the unexpected effect of her mad words. What is he going to say to her? What folly urged her on to repeat that ridiculous line? The idea of flight has just time to cross her mind, but not time to be acted upon, when the door is thrown open suddenly, and Cyril—who has at this moment returned from his dinner party—entering noisily, comes to her rescue.
CHAPTER XXIV.
"I have some naked thoughts that roam about
And loudly knock to have their passage out."—Milton.