“I did, and for that reason disfigured my head, put on a mustache, and assumed hideous spectacles. Did you never suspect my disguise, Amy?”
“No. Helen used to say that she felt something was wrong, but I never did till the other night.”
“Didn’t I do that well? I give you my word it was all done on the spur of the minute. I meant to speak soon, but had not decided how, when you came out so sweetly with that confounded old cloak, of which I’d no more need than an African has of a blanket. Then a scene I’d read in a novel came into my head, and I just repeated it con amore. Was I very pathetic and tragical, Amy?”
“I thought so then. It strikes me as ridiculous now, and I can’t help feeling sorry that I wasted so much pity on a man who—”
“Loves you with all his heart and soul. Did you cry and grieve over me, dear little tender thing? and do you think now that I am a heartless fellow, bent only on amusing myself at the expense of others? It’s not so; and you shall see how true and good and steady I can be when I have any one to love and care for me. I’ve been alone so long it’s new and beautiful to be petted, confided in, and looked up to by an angel like you.”
He was in earnest now; she felt it, and her anger melted away like dew before the sun.
“Poor boy! You will go home with us now, and let us take care of you in quiet England. You’ll play no more pranks, but go soberly to work and do something that shall make me proud to be your cousin, won’t you?”
“If you’ll change ‘cousin’ to ‘wife’ I’ll be and do whatever you please. Amy, when I was a poor, dying, Catholic foreigner you loved me and would have married me in spite of everything. Now that I’m your well, rich, Protestant cousin, who adores you as that Pole never could, you turn cold and cruel. Is it because the romance is gone, or because your love was only a girl’s fancy, after all?”
“You deceived me and I can’t forget it; but I’ll try,” was the soft answer to his reproaches.
“Are you disappointed that I’m not a baron?”