"Because I think God made all beautiful things for the pleasure of men's eyes," he answers, firmly, yet respectfully.
"Impertinent!" Vera says to herself, indignantly, and looks another way.
"Do you lay an embargo on my eye-sight as far as you are concerned, Lady Vera?" he continues, after a moment.
"Yes," she replies, with her head still turned away.
"Then I shall try to obey you," he answers, calmly. "I will not even see you when I can help it, but you must forgive me for saying that if I should never see you again I shall never forget a single line of your face."
"I hope he is not making love to me," Lady Vera says to herself, uneasily, then laughing at herself. "Of course not; I dare say he has a sweetheart in his own land, some dear, sweet, angelic creature, like Ivy Cleveland, perhaps."
They speak no more, and when they have gone once around the square, Captain Lockhart leaves the earl's daughter at the door with a low bow. She goes into the house, her cheeks tingling with an odd kind of shame.
"I was rude, perhaps," she thinks, a little uneasily. "What must he think of English manners? But then why did he look at me so? I felt so—so strangely."
To Lady Clive, who is trifling over a bit of fancy work, she says, presently:
"Why did you not tell me you expected your brother?"