“Ah, but not kind and good as you are, Captain Bruin, but scowling, and threatening, and angry, so that I am afraid of you.”
“But that is only a dream, darling.”
“Yes, but—” playing with the button of his coat.
“But what?”
“But you looked just so to-day in the Court, Maurice, and I think that's what made me so silly.”
“My darling! There; hush—don't cry!”
But she had burst into a passion of sobs and tears, that shook her slight figure in his arms.
“Oh, Maurice, I am a wicked girl! I don't know my own mind. I think sometimes I don't love you as I ought—you who have saved me and nursed me.”
“There, never mind about that,” muttered Maurice Frere, with a sort of choking in his throat.
She grew more composed presently, and said, after a while, lifting her face, “Tell me, Maurice, did you ever, in those days of which you have spoken to me—when you nursed me as a little child in your arms, and fed me, and starved for me—did you ever think we should be married?”