He laughed at her trembling with careless amusement. "What, still scared, my brown elf? Where is your old daring? Aren't you allowed to have any spirit at all in this house?"
She answered him incoherently, straining to keep her face hidden out of reach of his upturning hand. "No,—no, it's not that. You don't understand. It's all so new—so strange. Eustace, please—please, don't kiss me yet!"
He laughed again, but he did not press her for the moment. "Your father and I have had no end of a talk," he said. "Do you know what has come of it? Would you like to know?"
"Yes," she murmured shyly.
He was caressing the soft dark ringlets that clustered about her neck.
"About getting married, little sweetheart," he said. "You want to get it over quickly and so do I. There's no reason why we shouldn't in fact. How about the beginning of next month? How about April?"
"Oh, Eustace!" She clung to him closer still; she had no words. But still that sense of being caught, of being borne against her will, possessed her, filling her with dread rather than ecstasy. Whither was she going? Ah, whither?
He went on with his easy self-assurance, speaking as if he held the whole world at his disposal. "We will go South for the honeymoon. I've crowds of things to show you—Rome, Naples, Venice. After that we'll come back and go for that summer trip in the yacht I promised you."
"And Isabel too—and Scott?" asked Dinah, in muffled accents.
He laughed over her head, as at the naïve prattling of a child. "What! On our honeymoon? Oh, hardly, I think. I'll see to it that you're not bored. And look here, my elf! I won't have you shy with me any more. Is that understood? I'm not an ogre."