"Being so good a friend to Dick, then, you can advise me the better. Tell me, if you please, must I marry him—when—"
"When you are free to do it?" I finished for her. "Why should you not, my dear?"
She was pulling the threads from the lace edging of her kerchief and would not for a king's ransom let her eyes meet mine.
"You used to say—in that other time—that love should go before a marriage; did you not? Or do I remember badly?"
"You remember well. I said it then, and I say it again at this present. But Dick loves you well and truly, sweetheart; and you—"
She looked up quickly with the little laugh that used to mind me of happy children at play.
"And I?—now you will read a woman's heart for me, Monsieur John. Tell me; do I love him as his mistress should?"
"Nay, surely," said I, gravely, for somehow her laugh jarred upon me, "surely that is for you to say. But you have said it, long since."
"Have I?" she queried, with an arch lifting of the penciled brows that came straight from her French mother. "Mayhap you overheard me say it, Monsieur Eavesdropper?"
"God help me, little one—so I did," said I.