"I will try to be contented with just your friendly liking, my dear one, if you will give yourself to me," he answered, eagerly.
"I believe I could give you a daughter's affection, but never that of a wife," she murmured.
He did not in the least understand the swift, appealing look of the eyes that were raised a moment to his own. A swift thought had rushed over her and she had given it words:
"Oh, that he would adopt me for his daughter and save me from either of those two alternatives that lie before me," she thought, wildly. "He might do so for papa's sake, and I would make him a very devoted daughter!"
But the sighing lover did not want a daughter—he was after a wife.
"I will take you even on those terms," he replied. "Let me give you the shelter of my name, and we will see if I cannot soon win a warmer place in your heart."
She shook her head and a heavy sigh drifted across her lips.
"Do not deceive yourself, Colonel Carlyle," she said. "My heart is dead. I shall never love any one."
"I will risk all that," he answered. "Only say yes, most peerless of women, and so that I call you mine I will risk all else!"