“No, I shall never repent,” he replied, “unless—”
He checked himself; he was going to say she must make up her mind to leave Horstwyk, but he realized the unfairness of too precipitate appeal.
“Unless?” she repeated, looking into his eyes.
“We will talk about it some other day,” he answered, hastily. “For the moment you and I are simply happy; let that suffice us. I am proud of you, my darling, and it seems too good, you caring for an old fellow like me.”
He kissed her, and she blushed, half unwilling, under the unwonted familiarity from a man she barely knew. Love and marriage seemed so strange to her—not unpleasant, but so strange.
She watched him down the road, and her eyes grew misty. “Unless?” she softly repeated to herself. Then she went and found her father in his study.
“Papa,” she said, “you are sure that Otto loves me?”
“Why else should he ask you to marry him?” retorted the Dominé, turning abruptly in his round desk-chair.
“Yes, that is true,” replied Ursula, humbly. “But they cannot say the same of me.”
“How? What?” queried the Dominé, with troubled eyebrows.