"All right, I will be back in a moment, daughter." And the officer took himself off in complete disobedience of his wife's orders.
"Don't be gone long, father; there is no one here but Mary and the striker. You know I cannot depend on them."
"You keep the wolves off, Ermine; I won't be gone a minute." And Ermine found himself alone again with Katherine.
This time she was not pale unto death, but warm and tingling. Her lover's hands and feet took better care of themselves on a horse than in a chair, but the gloom under the porch at least stayed some of the embarrassment which her eyes occasioned him. Indeed, it is well known that lovers prefer night attacks, and despite the law and the prophets, they manage better without an audience.
She gained a particularly entrancing attitude in her chair by a pussy-cat wiggle which let the point of her very small foot out of concealing draperies. One hand hung limply toward Ermine over the arm of the chair, and it seemed to scream out to him to take hold of it.
"And when do you go, Mr. Ermine?"
This seemed safe, and along the lines of his self-interest.
"I go to-morrow; I have given my word."
"Very naturally there can be nothing to delay you here," she continued; "the fighting is over, I hear."