“No,” she murmured.
“You must think a heap of her to be rambling off this time of night to see her,” he went on. “Pray do not let me detain you.”
The girl swung her foot to and fro as if feeling for the first stepping-stone; and yet she probably knew perfectly well where it was. Then she said, with a queer catch in her voice, “It looks blacker over there.”
She had been brought up in the country. She was no more afraid of the darkness than he was, but he said, agreeably, “You want me to go with you?”
“N-not all the way. I don’t want you to see where I go.”
There was something peculiar in her voice, something peculiar in her manner, and the puzzled man knit his brows. There had not been quite enough consternation when she discovered him. She was acting, but acting badly. He would edge up on the stage a bit, and he went nearer and peered at her downcast head.
What he saw decided and enlightened him; for he suddenly choked back a laugh, and retreated into the deeper gloom of the tree, from whence a voice presently issued in pretended severity: “Nina, why did you marry me to-day?”
Now the girl was happy. She left the stepping-stone on which she had placed both her small feet and resumed her footing on dry ground. “I married you because I promised to do so. You have been very good to me ever since I was a little child. I am grateful to you, and if there is any profit to you in my marriage, I am willing for you to have it.”
“Profit,” he muttered to himself. “Good heavens, Miss Parrot, what do you mean? This is something you have learned by rote.” However, he kept his wonder to himself, and said aloud and still more sternly:
“Having married me, why are you running away?”