'That you are not, perhaps, what you really profess to be—in love.'
'With you?'
'Yes,' she replied, in a breathless voice.
'Have you ere this learned what love is?'
'I know what it should be like—timid and diffident,' she replied, uneasily, as her thoughts flashed sorrowfully to poor studious Robert Wodrow.
'You fear I do not love you?' he asked, reproachfully.
'I do not fear it.'
'Look into my eyes.'
She did look, and her own lowered, for she saw that which so often passes for love with the unthinking or unwary—deep and burning passion; and again she glanced nervously around her, but felt impelled to remain where she was. Sir Redmond detected the motion, and, misconstruing it, said, with a contemptuous smile that was too subtle for her to perceive,
'You and that—a—Mr. Robert Wodrow were sweethearts, as it is called, when you were children, I have heard.'