She stopped with a gasp. His arms were about her, holding her as she sat. He looked straight down into the shining blue eyes. "When I do, Chris—" he said.
She met his look quite bravely. She was even smiling rather tremulously herself. "You will get a stick and beat me," she said. "I know. People who have eyes like steel never make allowances for those who haven't!"
She got no further, for quite suddenly Trevor Mordaunt dropped his self-restraint like an impeding cloak and caught her to his heart. For the fraction of a second her fear came back, she almost made as if she would resist him; and then in a moment it was gone, lost in a wonder that left no room for anything else. For he kissed her, once and once only, so passionately, so burningly, so possessively, that it seemed to Chris as if, without her own volition, even half against her will, she thereby became his own. He had dominated her, he had won her, almost before she had had time to realize that there was a stranger within her gates.
CHAPTER III
THE WARNING
"Well, all I have to say is, 'Bravo, young un!'" Rupert Wyndham stretched out a careless arm and encircled his sister's waist therewith. She was perched on the arm of his chair, and she tweaked his ear airily in response to this encouragement.
"Oh, you're pleased, are you?" she said. "That's very nice of you."
"Pleased is a term that does not express my feelings in the least," he declared. "I am transported with delight. You are the last person I should have expected to retrieve the family fortunes, but you have done it right nobly. I'm told the fellow is as rich as Croesus. It's to be hoped that he is quite resigned to the fact that he is going to have plenty of relations when he marries. By the way, hasn't he any of his own?"
"None that count—only cousins and things. Such a mercy!" said Chris.
"And oh, Rupert, isn't it a blessing now that we never managed to sell
Old Park, or even to let it? We shall be able to live there ourselves and
turn it into a perfect paradise."
"He wants to buy it, eh?" Rupert glanced up keenly.