“But very natural! For indeed I think my honour might learn to love thee, child, could we but find thee a soul.”
“Love?” she repeated a little scornfully. “Could Sir John Dering love any but Sir John Dering?”
“’S heart, child, your speech improves very marvellously at times; and let me perish, Rose, but you have an air that matches extreme ill with your homespun!”
“I ... I ha’n’t lived always i’ the country, sir!” she retorted.
“And despite the mild innocence o’ thy look, thou hast a temper and a tongue, Rose.”
“I’d be a poor, helpless creature without ’em, sir.”
“As to my capacity for loving, I think I might love as well and truly as most, aye, even to the forgetting of John Dering. For, hid within John Dering I am conscious of a soul, Rose, a soul so very much greater than John Dering that ’tis great marvel John Dering is not greater than John Dering, seeing John Dering is the outward though very imperfect manifestation of John Dering’s soul—a soul that will live and love and go marching on when poor John Dering is dust. And, look you! True love being not passion of the flesh but virtue o’ the soul, ’tis therefore sure that I, John Dering, shall some day love with a love exceeding great, a love as imperishable as John Dering’s soul. How think you, my——” Here Sir John, chancing to lift his gaze, descried amidst the pervading gloom a solid, round object that projected itself immediately above him from the roof of the deck-house behind; and, reaching up suddenly, he grasped a shock of coarse hair.
“Aha!” he exclaimed, and gave the dim head a shake; whereupon came a groping hand to rend and smite, a hand that shrank and vanished at the threatening click of Sir John’s ready pistol.
“Who are you, rascal?” demanded Sir John.