'Do not talk to me thus—for your own amusement, Captain Colville,' said Mary, her eyes suffused with tears.
'Amusement!' he repeated, with a low tone of pain. 'Can you think so meanly of me? If you knew the genuine emotion of my heart towards you, Mary Wellwood, and the true regard with which you have inspired me——'
'I cannot, must not, listen to this,' said poor Mary, attempting to rise in alarm, and most loth to precipitate a scene, but a touch of his hand restrained her.
'Not listen to me! And why not?' asked Colville; and then he remembered Blanche Galloway's insinuation about young Wodrow, and paused.
'It is unbecoming your position and mine, I feel that you are but amusing yourself with me,' continued Mary, repressing a sob in her slender white throat with difficulty. 'You are a rich man of fashion—a man about town, I believe the term is; I am but the orphan daughter of a very poor one——'
'Of a gallant old officer,' said Colville, softly.
'True.'
'And you actually think me a snob? It is very hard. Ere long I shall get another to plead for me,' he added, laughing.
'What can he mean?' thought Mary.
'You pardon me just now,' said he, looking down upon her with great tenderness.