"She broke all the hearts of the swains in thim parts."
Lallie laughed.
"No 'Lucius O'Brian of Clare' has come as yet," she said.
She had turned her face back to Tony, with laughing challenge in her eyes.
"Upon my soul, I can't stand this," cried Tony Bevan, and fled from the room.
Lallie sat where she was, staring after him in speechless astonishment.
"I can't make out Tony these days at all, at all," she sighed.
But she did not get up and run after him as she would have done a month ago.
Tony held old-fashioned and chivalrous notions regarding his duties as host and guardian to his friend's daughter. It seemed to him that in no way was it possible for him to declare his feeling for Lallie without putting her in a false and painful position. And not to declare that feeling emphatically and at length was becoming every day more difficult. He knew the girl to be so fond of him in the dear, natural, unrestrained fashion that had grown with her growth, that had become as much a pleasant habit of mind as her love for Paddy or her father, that he dreaded, should he ask more, lest she might mistake her present feeling for something deeper, and in sheer gratitude and affection promise what it was not really hers to give. Again, should she feel it impossible even to consider him in the light of a lover, he made the situation difficult--nay, impossible--for her. She could not then return to B. House, and she had nowhere else to go.
Sometimes Tony let himself consider a third and glorious contingency--that Lallie cared even as he cared. Even so, she could not come back to B. House, but old Fitz would have to come back a bit sooner, and she could stay with the Wentworths till he did; at such moments as these Tony's lined face would grow boyishly radiant. But all too soon the good moment passed and stern realities hemmed him in on every side: loyalty to Fitz, the best and kindest thing to Lallie.