“How old are you, Floy?”
“Almost seventeen.”
“A charming age—the time of illusions! I am twenty-eight, dear—almost an old maid.”
“You do not look twenty.”
“So they tell me; but my heart is even older than my years,” with a suppressed sigh; then, smiling: “Have you ever had a lover, Floy? Why, how frightened you look—how deeply you blush! Never mind; you needn’t answer, child; your face tells its own conscious story.”
“Oh, if she only knew the name of that lover!” thought Floy, with quickened heart-beats; but she did not feel much frightened. She hoped that the haughty Beresfords who admired her so much would find it easy to forgive St. George for his choice.
But in the meantime she must keep her pretty secret, as he had commanded her to do. She would not tell them a word till he should take her by the hand and say:
“Pretty little Floy is my heart’s choice.”
How impatiently she waited for that day, only God and the angels knew.
For the thought of his illness and the secret terror that he might die, far away from his beloved, kept Floy awake many hours each night.