She might have been reading a carefully prepared address: her eyes never wavered from the wall in front—it was as if she saw her words there.
“Then—then will you ask her?”
She stared at him now.
“You mean that you wish me to ask her to marry you?”
“Yes,” he said simply. “She will feel freer in that way. You will know as I should not, directly, if there is any chance. I can talk about it with you more easily—somehow.”
She shrugged her shoulders with a strange air of exhaustion; it was the yielding of one too tired to argue.
“Very well,” she breathed, “go now, and I will ask her. Come this evening. You will excuse—”
She made a vague motion. The colonel pitied her tremendously in a blind way. Was it all this to lose a daughter? How she loved her!
“Perhaps to-morrow morning,” he suggested, but she shook her head vehemently.
“No, to-night, to-night!” she cried. “Lady will know directly. Come tonight!”