Geoffrey raises her hand to his lips. "Your king is also your slave," he says, with a fond smile.
Then they move on once more, and go down the road that leads towards the farm.
Again she has grown silent, as though oppressed with thought; and he too is mute, but all his mind is crowded with glad anticipations of what the near future is to give him. He has no regrets, no fears. At length, struck by her persistent taciturnity, he says, "What is it, Mona?"
"If ever you should be sorry afterwards," she says, miserably, still tormenting herself with unseen evils,—"if ever I should see discontent in your eyes, how would it be with me then?"
"Don't talk like a penny illustrated," says Mr. Rodney in a very superior tone. "If ever you do see all you seem to anticipate, just tell yourself I am a cur, and despise me accordingly. But I think you are paying both yourself and me very bad compliments when you talk like that. Do try to understand that you are very beautiful, and far superior to the general run of women, and that I am only pretty well so far as men go."
At this they both laugh heartily, and Mona returns no more to the lachrymose mood that has possessed her for the last five minutes.
The moon has gone behind a cloud, the road is almost wrapped in complete gloom, when a voice, coming from apparently nowhere, startles them, and brings them back from visions of impossible bliss to the present very possible world.
"Hist, Miss Mona! hist!" says this voice close at Mona's ear. She starts violently.
"Oh! Paddy," she says, as a small figure, unkempt, and only half clad, creeps through the hedge and stops short in her path.
"Don't go on, miss," says the boy, with much excitement. "Don't ye. I see ye coming', an', no matter what they do to me, I says to myself, I'll warn her surely. They're waitin' for the agint below, an' maybe they might mistake ye for some one else in the dark, an' do ye some harm."