He came close to her, and looked as though he would read her through and through. “Can you ask that question?” he said most seriously. “If you ask it because from your soul you wish to know, good! But if you ask it as a woman who would read a man’s heart, and then—”
“Oh, hush!—hush!” she whispered. Her face became pale, and her eyes had a painful brightness. “You must not answer. I had no right to ask. Oh, monsieur!” she added, “I would have you always for my friend if I could, though you are the enemy of my country and of the man—I am to marry.”
“I am for my king,” he replied; “and I am enemy of him who stands between you and me. For see: from the hour that I met you I knew that some day, even as now, I should tell you that—I love you—indeed, Jessica, with all my heart.”
“Oh, have pity!” she pleaded. “I cannot listen—I cannot.”
“You shall listen, for you have remembered me and have understood. Voila!” he added, hastily catching her silver buckle from his bosom. “This that you sent me, look where I have kept it—on my heart!”
She drew back from him, her face in her hands. Then suddenly she put them out as though to prevent him coming near her, and said:
“Oh, no—no! You will spare me; I am an affianced wife.” An appealing smile shone through her tears. “Oh, will you not go?” she begged. “Or, will you not stay and forget what you have said? We are little more than strangers; I scarcely know you; I—”
“We are no strangers,” he broke in. “How can that be, when for years I have thought of you—you of me? But I am content to wait, for my love shall win you yet. You—”
She came to him and put her hands upon his arm. “You remember,” she said, with a touch of her old gaiety, and with an inimitable grace, “what good friends we were that first day we met? Let us be the same now—for this time at least. Will you not grant me this for to-day?”
“And to-morrow?” he asked, inwardly determining to stay in the port of New York and to carry her off as his wife; but, unlike Bucklaw, with her consent.