“But that must have been a matter of considerable delicacy, Miss Dangerfield, when you consider that you are engaged to marry Mr. Gillingwater.”
“Not in the least,” said Jerry. “I broke our engagement the moment I saw that he came here the other night all dressed up to eat and not to fight, and he is now free to engage himself to that thin blonde at Goldsboro whom he thinks so highly intellectual.”
Jerry held up her left hand and regarded its ringless fingers judicially, while Ardmore, his heart racing hotly against all records, watched her, and with a particular covetousness his eyes studied that trifle of a hand.
Then with a quick gesture he seized her hand and raised her gently to her feet.
“Jerry!” he cried. “From the moment you winked at me I have loved you. I should have followed you round the world until I found you. If you can marry a worthless wretch like me, if—O Jerry!”
She gently freed her hand and stepped to one side, bending her head like a bird that pauses alarmed, or uncertain of its whereabouts, glancing cautiously up and down the creek.
“Mr. Ardmore,” she said, “you may not be aware that when you asked me to be your wife—and that, I take it, was your intention—you were standing in South Carolina, while I stood with both feet on the sacred soil of the Old North State. Under the circumstances I do not think your proposal is legal. Moreover, unless you are quite positive which eye it was that so far forgot itself as to wink, I do not think the matter can go further.”
The slightest suggestion of a smile played about her lips, but he was very deeply troubled, and seeing this, her eyes grew grave with kindness.
“Mr. Ardmore, if your muscles of locomotion have not been utterly paralyzed, and if you will leave that particular state of the Union which, next to Massachusetts, I most deeply abhor, I will do what I can in my poor weak way—as father says in beginning his best speeches—to assist you to the answer.”
Then for many æons, when he had his arms about her, a kiss, which he had intended for the lips that were so near, somehow failed of its destination, and fell upon what seemed to him a rose-leaf gone to Heaven, but which was, in fact, Jerry Dangerfield’s left eye. His being tingled with the most delicious of intoxications, to which the clasp of her arms about his neck added unnecessary though not unwelcome delight. Then she drew back and held him away with her finger-tips for an instant.