"And do you really mean," she whispered, stealing a glance up at me, "that if your father goes away, there is nothing left in the world which could give you any pleasure? Nothing you would wish for?"
I thought of Maud—when was I not thinking of her?—and sighed bitterly.
"Only one thing," I said, "and that I cannot have."
"Won't you tell me what it is?" she asked, hesitatingly, with her eyes fixed upon the ground.
I shook my head. "I think not. No, it would be better not."
There was a short silence. Then she lifted her beautiful eyes to mine for a moment, and dropped them again, instantly, with a deep blush: I was puzzled. There was something in them which I could not read, something inviting, beseeching, tender. Knowing what I know now, it seems to me that I must have been a blind, senseless fool. But it is easy to be wise afterwards, and my own sorrows were absorbing every sense.
"Will you tell me this?" she asked. "Does this one thing include somebody else?"
She had read my secret, then; she knew that I loved Maud. Well, it was not very strange that she should have guessed it after all!
"Yes, you have guessed it, Lady Olive," I said quietly, with my eyes fixed upon the line of the horizon where a star-bespangled sky seemed to touch the glistening, dancing sea. "You have guessed it; but remember, I never told you."
I felt a soft breath on my cheek, and before I could move a pair of white arms were thrown around my neck, and a tear-stained, half-blushing, half-smiling face, with a mass of ruffled hair, was lying on my shoulder.