He made no reply, and, after a moment's pause, she asked, "Do you feel able to stand on your feet?"
Still he did not answer, but gave her that same intent, questioning look, as if gazing through and beyond the depths of the eyes above him.
As she stammeringly repeated her inquiry, he sighed heavily, and seemed to shake his dreaming senses awake, for, raising himself a little, he passed his shapely brown hand over his bandaged head, and laughed, albeit not very mirthfully.
"The other fair young dame must be rejoiced at my mishap," he said, "but—I thank you for your care. I seem to have done something to my head, for it feels like a burning coal." And he touched the bandage over the wound.
"It is the salt water, getting into the cut," Dorothy explained, as he rose slowly and stood before her. "I am very sorry it is so painful; but it will stop the bleeding."
"As it was you who placed it there, I like it to burn," he said in a tone to reach her ears alone. "But I'll not forget, even when the pain ceases." And he looked down into her face in a way that made her eyes droop.
"I regret very much, sir, that you were injured," said Mary Broughton, her voice coming from over his head.
He glanced up at her and bowed mockingly. Then stooping to regain his hat, he said, bending his eyes on Dorothy, "Tell me the name I am to remember you by."
She did not answer; and he stood looking at her as though awaiting her pleasure.
"That can be no matter," she said at last, and in a very low voice.