'News?' she repeated in a whisper.
'Of a nature, perhaps, beyond your imagining,' said he in a voice that became low and husky despite its tenderness.
'What do you mean, Roland? You frighten me, dearest!'
He pressed her closer to him, and she felt that his hands were trembling violently.
'Annot, I have a hundred times and more heard you say that you loved me for myself, and would continue to love me were I poor—poor as Job himself.'
'Of course I have often said so, and I do love you; but why do you ask this question now? What has happened? Why are you so strange?' she asked, changing colour and looking decidedly restless in eye and manner. 'Are you not well? How cold your poor hands are, and how they tremble!'
She drooped her fairy-like head, with all its wealth of shining golden hair, upon his shoulder, and looked upward keenly, if tenderly, into his downcast eyes.
'Has any new calamity occurred to distress you?'
'Nothing that is new—to me.'
'Why, then—