“I’ve — I’ve to thank you, sir. I don’t understand you. Why do you offer this?”
“Because I love you,” he answered. “Must you ask that?”
She raised her eyes to his face, and knew that he had spoken the truth. She wondered that he did not take her into his arms, and with a fine intuition realised the chivalry of this man who would take no advantage of her being alone in his house, and quite defenceless. She drew her hand away, and felt a hot pricking beneath her eyelids. “I cannot marry you, Sir Anthony. I am no fit bride for you.”
“Don’t you think I might be permitted to judge of that?” he suggested.
She shook her head. “You know nothing of me, Sir Anthony.”
“My dear, I have looked many times into your eyes,” he said. “They tell me all I have need to know.”
“I — don’t think so, sir,” she forced herself to say.
Her hand lay on the chair-back. He took it in his again, and carried it to his lips. “You have the truest eyes in the world, Prudence,” he said. “And the very bravest.”
“You don’t know me,” she repeated. “I have led the life of an adventurer; I am an adventurer — a masquerader! I have no knowledge even of my true name. My father — ” She paused.
“I take it your name may well prove to be a Tremaine,” he said, with a soft laugh.