“The man must have been raving mad,” interrupted Rowton.
“Mad or not, his words had power over me,” said Nancy. “He terrified me into submission. I promised him that I would keep his secret and would carry on his life work. Then, Adrian, he asked me not to marry—not to think of the lighter things of life until my task was accomplished.”
“And you promised?”
“No, I hesitated.”
“You did well, for if you had promised fifty times you would have found yourself my wife before many days had gone by.”
“Adrian, why are you so overmastering? You overpower me—you subdue me. Your power over me is greater even than my father’s was.”
“That is as it should be,” said Rowton. “Now then, Nancy, let us to commonplace. I am truly sorry you are burdened with a secret, but if you think that secret is to keep us asunder you do not yet know your man. Listen, my child; I am going to tell you something strange. It so happens, my pretty wild bird, that your having a secret does not matter so terribly to me as it would to other men. I also, sweetheart, am the owner of a secret care. Nancy, my pretty child, I am not what I seem. I look one thing, but I am in reality something different. There, now, I have startled you, have I not? It would be comical to hear what you really think of me, from those red lips. What sort of a man do I seem, Nancy mine?”
“The best, the bravest, the noblest in the world,” she answered. “You are an honourable English gentleman; a man whose word is as good as his bond. You are a true man in heart and in soul.”
“Faith! child, do not say any more or you’ll crush me to the earth. Why, you poor little girl, I am not a bit like that in reality. Do you think I have no wild blood in me. Don’t I look at times, at times—the truth now, Nancy—don’t I look at times a very Ishmaelite, a man whose hand might be against every other man? Has not my eye a wild gleam in it? Look at me now, Nance, and say truly what you think.”
“You never appear anything to me but what I have just said,” she answered, giving him a somewhat timid glance, “but it is true that others have told me——”