“Poor thing!” laughed Richard.
“And I believe you love her.”
“Indeed I don’t, nor anybody else but you, you beautiful little rosebud. Oh, Daisy, Daisy, how can you be so cruel!”
“I’m not, I’m not cruel,” sobbed poor Daisy; “but I want to do what’s right.”
“Of course,” whispered Richard. “But come along, let’s go in the counting-house—to my room—it’s safer there.”
“I won’t, I won’t,” cried Daisy, indignantly. “At such a time of night, too! You oughtn’t to ask me.”
“I only asked you for your own sake,” said Richard, “because people might talk if they saw you with me here.”
“Oh yes,” sobbed Daisy; “and they would. I must go.”
“Stop a moment,” said Richard, catching her wrist. “Perhaps, too, it was a little for my own sake, because the men are so furious against me.”
“Oh yes, I heard,” cried Daisy, with her voice shaking; “but they did not hurt you to-day?”