"I think you must mean what you say, Mr. White; and you do not say it as other men have said it. But will you please to remember not to say it again? We cannot be friends, if you do."
"Never again, Mrs. Philbrick?" he said,--he could almost have said "Mercy,"--and looked at her with a gaze of whose intentness he was hardly aware.
Mercy felt a strange terror of this man; a few minutes ago a stranger, now already asking at her hands she hardly knew what, and compelling her in spite of herself. But she replied very quietly, with a slight smile,--
"Never, Mr. White. Now talk of something else, please. Your mother seemed very much pleased with the ferns I carried her to-day. Did she love the woods, when she was well?"
"I do not know. I never heard her say," answered Stephen, absently, still gazing into Mercy's face.
"But you would have known, surely, if she had cared for them," said Mercy, laughing; for she perceived that Stephen had spoken at random.
"Oh, yes, certainly,--certainly. I should have known," said Stephen, still with a preoccupied air, and rising to go. "I thank you for letting me come into this beautiful room with you. I shall always think of your face framed in evergreens, and with flickering firelight on it."
"You are not going away, are you, Mr. White?" asked Mercy, mischievously.
"Oh, no, certainly not. I never go away. How could I go away? Why did you ask?"
"Oh," laughed Mercy, "because you spoke as if you never expected to see my face after to-night. That's all."