"What else?" he answered reluctantly. "But there is no need to talk of it."
"It cannot—it must not happen!" said Miss Boyle desperately.
He glanced at her half doubtingly. The moonlight was elusive, treacherous; he could not guess what emotion it was that shook her.
"You laughed at the paragraph in the paper," she continued, "and now——"
He ended her sentence.
"I cannot laugh at his manner of taking it; that he should speak to you, in that tone—that he should dare. We could not take from any man, least of all from Lord Lyndwood."
"You have neither right nor excuse to interfere," she answered. "I do not ask you to champion me, Francis."
"The right of a member of your family, madam, the head of your family; your father would approve what I do."
"But you swore you wished to please me," she cried feverishly. "Well, please me this way."