“Why, I mean—I mean—that you are in play, that, it is amusement, fun, to you; while to me—”
And then she saw in his eyes something new, something of the earnestness, the seriousness which she had longed for, but which she had not before detected in the light-hearted sailor.
“While to you—? Why, little one, do you think it is anything to you, this promise that I am to have you to guard and to keep near my heart for our lives, more than it is to me? Do you think one must meet one’s happiness with a sour face, Mabin, and ask a girl to love you from the other side of a stone wall? Oh, my little sweetheart, with the shy eyes and the proud heart, you have a great deal to learn; and the very first thing is to trust me, and not to think my love of no account because I can woo you with a light heart.”
Every word seemed to echo in the young girl’s heart. She was taken off her feet, lifted high into an enchanted region where words were music, and a touch of the fingers ecstasy, and she hardly dared to speak, to move, to draw breath lest the spell should be broken, and she should wake up to commonplace life again. She listened, hardly speaking, to her lover as he told her how she had always remained in his mind as the childish figure that foreshadowed his womanly ideal; how her cold reserve had piqued him, made him study her the more; and finally how quickly these feelings had given place to warmer ones when he and she became friends once more.
They did not know how the time went. The sun rose high, the shadows shifted gradually, the dew dried on the long grass. At last a bell, ringing loudly in the garden behind the plantation, startled Mabin, and made her spring up.
“That’s for luncheon, it must be for luncheon!” she cried in blushing confusion. “I’d forgotten—forgotten everything!”
Rudolph laughed gently, and picked up her bag and her work.
“I won’t come in,” said he. “But I’ll go through the plantation with you to carry these.”
Across Mabin’s face there came a cloud.
“You must see Mrs. Dale,” she said. “She will want to see you, and yet——”