"Speak you."
"I am what I seem, a man within your sphere. By all the accidents of position and circumstance suited to it. Have you not learned it?"
"I am not what I seem. I never wore so splendid a dress as this till tonight, and shall not again."
He gave the fan such a twirl that its slender sticks snapped, and it dropped like the broken wing of a bird.
"Mr. Uxbridge, that fan belongs to Mrs. Bliss."
He threw it out of the window.
"You have courage, fidelity, and patience—this character with a passionate soul. I am sure that you have such a soul?"
"I do not know."
"I have fallen in love with you. It happened on the very day when I passed you on the way to the Glen. I never got away from the remembrance of seeing your hand on the mane of my horse."
He waited for me to speak, but I could not; the balance of my mind was gone. Why should this have happened to me—a slave? As it had happened, why did I not feel exultant in the sense of power which the chance for freedom with him should give?