Bidiane paused for an instant, and gazed over her shoulder. "Your old horse is nearly on my heels, and his eyes are like carriage lamps."
"Back!" exclaimed Agapit, to the curious and irrepressible Turenne.
"You say nothing of your election," remarked Bidiane. "Are you glad?"
He drew a rapid breath, and turned his red face towards her again. "My mind is in a whirl, little cousin, and my pulses are going like hammers. You do not know what it is to sway men by the tongue. When one stands up, and speaks, and the human faces spreading out like a flower-bed change and lighten, or grow gloomy, as one wishes, it is majestic,—it makes a man feel like a deity."
"You will get on in the world," said Bidiane, impulsively. "You have it in you."
"But must I go alone?" he said, passionately. "Bidiane, you, though so much younger, you understand me. I have been happy to-day, yes, happy, for amid all the excitement, the changing faces, the buzzing of talk in my ears, there has been one little countenance before me—"
"Yes,—Rose's."
"You treat me as if I were a boy," he said, vehemently, "on this day when I was so important. Why are you so flippant?"
"Don't be angry with me," she said, coaxingly.
"Angry," he muttered, in a shocked voice. "I am not angry. How could I be with you, whom I love so much?"