"Tell me this at least," says Dysart, very earnestly, bending over her with the air of one determined to sift his chances to the last grain, "you like me?"
"Oh, yes."
"Better than Courtenay, for example?" with a fleeting smile that fails to disguise the real anxiety he is enduring.
"What an absurd question!"
"Than Dicky Brown?"
"Yes."
But here she lifts her head and gazes at him in a startled way that speaks of quick suspicion. There is something of entreaty, too, in her dark eyes, a desire that he will go no further.
But Dysart deliberately disregards it.
"Than Beauclerk?" asks he in a clear, almost cruel tone.
A horrible red rushes up to dye her pretty cheeks, in spite of all her efforts to subdue it. Great tears of shame and confusion suffuse her eyes. One little reproachful glance she casts at him, and then: