About three hours after this, as I lay upon the couch in the large room, clean and well shaven, the door opened, and some one entered, saying to my guard, “You will remain outside. I have the Governor’s order.”
I knew the voice; an instant, and I saw the face shining with expectancy, the eyes eager, yet timid, a small white hand pressed to a pulsing breast—my one true friend, the jailer of my heart.
For a moment she was all trembling and excited, her hand softly clutching at my shoulder, tears dripping from her eyes and falling on my cheek, as hers lay pressed to mine; but presently she grew calm, and her face was lifted with a smile, and, brushing back some flying locks of hair, she said in a tone most quaint and touching too, “Poor gentleman! poor English prisoner! poor hidden lover! I ought not, I ought not,” she added, “show my feelings thus, nor excite you so.” My hand was trembling on hers, for in truth I was very weak. “It was my purpose,” she continued, “to come most quietly to you; but there are times when one must cry out, or the heart will burst.”
I spoke then as a man may who has been delivered from bondage into the arms of love. She became very quiet, looking at me in her grave, sweet way, her deep eyes shining with a sincerity.
“Honest, honest eyes,” said I—“eyes that never deceive, and never were deceived.”
“All this in spite of what you do not know,” she answered. For an instant a look elfish and childlike came into her eyes, and she drew back from me, stood in the middle of the floor, and caught her skirts in her fingers.
“See,” she said, “is there no deceit here?”
Then she began to dance softly, her feet seeming hardly to touch the ground, her body swaying like a tall flower in the wind, her face all light and fire. I was charmed, fascinated. I felt my sleepy blood stirring to the delicate rise and fall of her bosom, the light of her eyes flashing a dozen colours. There was scarce a sound her steps could not be heard across the room.
All at once she broke off from this, and stood still.
“Did my eyes seem all honest then?” she asked, with a strange, wistful expression. Then she came to the couch where I was.