The young man hesitated.
“I don’t know yet,” he said, slowly. “I’ve got a curious hand dealt out to me. I hardly know how to play it. One thing is sure, though: hearts are trumps.”
He tried to catch her glance, but she kept her eyes resolutely bent upon the water.
“You know what I want to say,” he went on, moving his arm upon the rail till there was the least small fluttering suggestion of contact with hers. “It must have said itself to you that day upon the mountain-top, or, for that matter, why, that very first time I saw you I went away head over heels in love. I tell you, candidly, I haven’t thought or dreamed for a minute of anything else from that blessed day. It’s all been fairyland to me ever since. I’ve been so happy! May I stay in fairyland, Kate?”
She made no answer. Bernard felt her arm tremble against his for an instant before it was withdrawn. He noted, too, the bright carmine flush spring to her cheek, overmantle her dark face and then fade away before an advancing pallor. A tear glittered among her downcast lashes.
“You mustn’t deny me my age of miracles!” he murmuringly pleaded. “It was a miracle that we should have met as we did; that I should have found you afterward as I did; that I should have turned up just when you needed help the most; that the stray discovery of an old mediæval parchment should have given me the hint what to do. Oh, don’t you feel it, Kate? Don’t you realize, too, dear, that there was fate in it all? That we belonged from the beginning to each other?”
Very white-faced and grave, Kate lifted herself erect and looked at him. It was with an obvious effort that she forced herself to speak, but her words were firm enough and her glance did not waver.
“Unfortunately,” she said, “your miracle has a trick in it. Even if ’t would have pleased me to believe in it, how can I, whin ’t is founded on desate.”
Bernard stared at her in round-eyed wonderment.
“How ‘deceit’?” he stammered. “How do you mean? Is it about kidnapping O’Daly? We only did that—”