"I beg your pardon, Lady Vera," he answers, flushing, "I spoke from the merest impulse. I thought—since you are so very young—you could not know my country well."
Lady Vera blushes, but holds her peace. Of course, somebody will tell him her story soon—tell him that her mother was American, and that she herself had spent seventeen years in his own native land. At least he shall not hear it from her. She has a vague notion that it would please him to know it, that the blue eyes whose sparkle she has already learned to know, would light with pleasure at the knowledge.
Those eyes, how bright and keen they are. They seem to read one's thoughts. Lady Vera finds her gaze drooping from them as they never drooped before mortal man's before. Why? she asks herself.
"It is because he is so bold," she decides, vexedly. "He seems to be trying to read one's inmost thoughts. I will show him that I am not afraid of him."
Thereupon she lifts the dark eyes bravely to give him a cool society stare, but in an instant they waver and fall before the glance they have surprised in his. Just so the blue eyes had turned on her last night, when he sang:
"On the banks of Allan Water,
When the sweet spring tide did fall,
Was the miller's lovely daughter,
Fairest of them all!
For his bride a soldier sought her,
And a winning tongue had he,
On the banks of Allan Water
None so gay as she."
"Why do you stare at me so?" she breaks out, angry with herself, and with him.
He flushes, startled by her brusquerie.
"I beg your pardon—I did not mean to be rude," he answers, quietly. "But, Lady Vera, a man must be blind not to look at you."
"Why?" she asks, still sharply.