“What does Evelyn say?” asked Sylvia, intensely excited.
“What does she say? Nothing. She is stunned, I take it; but she will wake up and know what it means. No chocolate, and no one to sleep in the little white bed by her side.”
“Oh, how she must enjoy her chocolate!” said poor Sylvia, a sigh of longing in her voice.
“I am grand at making it,” said Jasper. “I have spent my life in many out-of-the-way places. It was in Madrid I learnt to make chocolate; no one can excel me with it. I’d like well to make a cup for you.”
“And I’d like to drink it,” said Sylvia.
“As well as I can see you in this light,” continued Jasper, “you look as if a cup of my chocolate would do you good. Chocolate made all of milk, with plenty of bread and butter, is a meal which no one need despise. I say, miss, shall we go back to the “Green Man,” and shall you and me have a bit of supper together? You would not be too proud to take it with me although I am only my young lady’s maid?”
“I wish I could,” said Sylvia. There was a wild desire in her heart, a sort of passion of hunger. “But,” she continued, “I cannot; I must go home now.”
“Is your home near, miss?”
“Oh yes; it is just at the other side of that wall. But please do not talk of it—father hates people knowing. He likes us to live quite solitary.”
“And it is a big house. Yes, I can see that,” continued Jasper, peering through the trees.