“I wish, all the same, you thought kinder of him. You’m awful cold to the man.”
“He makes me cold. For my part, I wish you didn’t like him so well as you do.”
Dan grew rather red.
“No man, nor woman neither, will ever stand between me an’ Titus Sim,” he said.
“You might think ’twas jealousy,” she answered quietly, “for you are sun, an’ air, an’ life to me, Daniel. ’Tis my love quickens my heart. But I’m not jealous. Only I can’t pretend to care for him. I’ve got nought against him save a womanly, nameless dread. An’ why it’s in my heart I don’t know, for I ban’t one to mislike folks without a cause.”
“Then best to get it out of your heart,” he said roughly. “You’m not used to talk nonsense. The man’s one in a thousand—kind, honest, gentle, an’ as good a shot as there is in the county. Straight as a line, too. Straighter than I be myself, for that matter. He’ve behaved very game over this, for well I know what it cost him to lose you.”
“I wish I felt to respect him like you do. ’Tis wicked not to, yet I be asking myself questions all the time. He’m so rich, they say. How can he be rich, Daniel? Where do the money come from?”
“From the same place as my own father’s; from gentlefolks’ pockets. The men he waits on make no more of a five pound note than we do of a halfpenny. Titus will die a rich man, and glad am I to think it; for he’s been a most unlucky chap in other ways. There was his health first, as wouldn’t let him be a keeper, though he wanted to, and then—you. An’ a worthless beggar like me—I can do what I please an’ win you. All the same, I don’t think no better of you for not thinking better of my best friend.”
“I hope you’ll never find there was a reason for what I feel, Daniel.”