“Why,” said he, looking out to sea and frowning with perplexity, “I thought all girls knew that.”
“I don’t,” said Freda shaking her head. “I don’t understand it at all. It seems ridiculous to like a person very much, fall in love as you call it, when you have only seen that person once, and can’t be sure at all what that person is really like.”
“Perhaps one can be surer than you think. At any rate I felt sure enough about you to make up my mind at once that you were the girl I should like to make my wife.”
“Wife!” echoed Freda in astonishment and even horror, “me! a cripple!”
“Yes, you, just as you are, little crutch and all. Now, child, will you have me? You don’t love me yet, but you will very soon, for I love you deeply, and you are loving. You trust me, I know, although you have avoided me lately. There is trouble coming upon this part of the world, and I will take you away from it, and keep you safe for all your life. Won’t you let me?”
But Freda grew white and began to tremble. Before she could attempt any answer, however, he broke in again.
“I tell you you are not safe here; this place is infested with desperate characters, who have access to the house by all sorts of secret ways. Only this morning, as I was sitting in the library, a man suddenly appeared before me, who seemed to spring out of the wall itself.”
In an instant Freda became flushed and full of passionate interest.
“What was he like?” she asked breathlessly.
“He was a young man, with a thin, wolfish face, with light eyes I think; dressed in an old brown shooting jacket. He looked half starved.”