“My darling,” he whispered in her ear—a little shell-like ear of rose and ivory tints—“I shall speak to you always as a man speaks to the creature that lives in his heart, whom he loves, whom he trusts, whom he worships. And you, Nouna, must be good and gentle, and grow up into a sweet, noble woman for me, so that my love for you may make me better. I can never give you a palace, Nouna, or elephants with golden trappings; if I can ever buy you diamonds it will not be till you are too old to care for them; and you will only have one slave. But you will be a queen to me, my darling, as long as our lives last; and I will get on and make my name famous, so that you shall not envy the proudest maharanee in India, you shall be so happy as the good true wife of a plain English gentleman.”
“Wife!” repeated Nouna wonderingly, raising her head from his shoulder to peer into his eyes. “That is what mamma always says. I must be good and be the wife of an English gentleman, and then I shall be happy! Are all the wives of English gentlemen so happy?”
George felt hot. Those gleaming black eyes, though they could not read thoughts half so quickly and surely as they did feelings, had a steadiness and persistency that made it hard to look into them and tell a lie.
“All those that are beautiful and good like you are happy, unless they marry bad men.”
“How can they tell they’re bad before they’ve married them? You might be bad, and I shouldn’t know.”
“You will have time to find out in the two years that must pass before I can marry you.”
“Two years!” She began writhing and wriggling in his arms like an electric eel. “Put me down, put me down at once!” She enforced her command with such agile movements that he had to comply. “I’m not going to wait two years!” And she readjusted her crumpled draperies with an injured manner. “I shall marry you at once, or else I shall not marry you at all. I shall have Rahas; he has changed to-day, and says he only desires my happiness; but he shall change back again and desire me for a wife. I will not wait two years. You do not love me. Love is for now, not for two years!”
He has changed to-day! Those words struck Lauriston, and reminded him again of the strangeness of the circumstances which surrounded the girl he loved, and of the impossibility of settling anything until he had heard from her mother.
“Very well, Nouna,” he said gently, “I won’t quarrel with you for wanting to have me before I am well off. I must leave you now, my darling, and I will write to your mother in the morning. Tell me her address.”
“She is in Spain, now travelling about; we always write to her lawyers.”