"I do not," returns he, with an accent that is almost regret. "I wish I could. It matters little what you do, I shall never think of you but as the dearest and sweetest girl I ever met. In that"—with a sigh—"lies my misfortune."
"Not think badly of me! and yet you called me a flirt! Am I a flirt?"
Chetwoode hesitates, but only for a minute; then he says, decidedly, though gently:
"Perhaps not a flirt, but certainly a coquette. Do not be angry with me for saying so. Think how you passed this one evening. First remember the earlier part of it, and then your cruel encouragement of the luckless guardsman."
"But the people I wanted to dance with wouldn't ask me to dance," says Lilian, reproachfully, "and what was I to do? I did not care for that stupid Captain Monk: he was handsome, but insufferably slow, and—and—I don't believe I cared for any one."
"What! not even for——" He pauses. Not now, not at this moment, when for a sweet though perhaps mad time she seems so near to him in thought and feeling, can he introduce his rival's name. Unconsciously he tightens his arm round her, and, emboldened by the softness of her manner, smooths back from her forehead the few golden hairs that have wandered there without their mistress's will.
Lilian is silent, and strangely, unutterably happy.
"I wish we could be always friends," she says, wistfully, after a little eloquent pause.
"So do I,"—mournfully,—"but I know we never shall be."
"That is a very unkind speech, is it not? At least"—slipping five warm little fingers into his disengaged hand—"I shall always be a friend of yours, and glad of every smallest thing that may give you happiness."