'Yours!'
'Yes—you look perplexed—even distressed; nevertheless it is so,' she rejoined, tapping the floor, as if impatient, with a slim and pretty foot.
'Will it ever be unravelled?'
'Yes—very soon now, perhaps.'
'But when?'
'When the proper time comes. Till then, Captain Goring, I shall trust to your friendship for myself and Captain Dalton not to attempt to probe it, or act the umpire or match-maker between us.'
She said this emphatically, and with one of her sweetest smiles, while her soft white hand was placed confidently in that of Goring.
'I shall be silent as the grave,' said he. 'I have suspected something of this kind. At times a great gloom comes over poor Tony; there has been some mystery about his early life; what, I cannot divine; but it drove him into the ranks, and made him for years loathe England and English society, which he avoided as much as possible. He seems to have got over that whim now, and to you I look forward as the means of effecting a perfect cure.'
She gave Goring one of her soft and inexplicable smiles, and then, drooping her eyelids said, with a sigh, but apparently one of pleasure,
'You expect too much from me, Captain Goring.'