"But why?" she persisted.
He could not check the words that passed his lips; he had lost control over himself.
"Don't you understand?" he replied passionately. "I have no right to be here because I love you—love you more than my own life. Because you are everything to me—everything—and you have promised to marry Sir George Weston."
"But I've not." She laughed gaily as she uttered the words.
"You've not promised to——But—but——"
"No, of course not. How could I? I do not love him. He is awfully nice, and I'm very fond of him; but I don't love him. I could never think of such a thing."
She spoke quite naturally, and in an almost matter-of-fact way. She did not seem to realise that her words caused Dick Faversham's brain to reel, and his blood to rush madly through his veins. Rather she seemed like one anxious to correct a mistake, but to have no idea of what the correction meant to him.
For a few seconds Dick did not speak. "She is only a child," he reflected. "She does not understand what I have said to her. She does not realise what my love for her means."
But he was not sure of this. Something, he knew not what, told him she did know. Perhaps it was the flush on her cheeks, the quiver on her lips, the strange light in her eyes.
"You have not promised to marry Sir George Weston?" he asked hoarsely.