“It’s true, every word of it! You are really the prettiest girl in New York, Eva. I said so the first time I saw you, and I say so still. The prettiest and the sweetest.”
“It’s coming! I’m so sorry!” she thought with secret dismay, having grown in a year of belleship quite familiar with the signs.
“Oh, no,” she answered deprecatingly.
“But I say yes,” he insisted, trying to look down ardently into the dark eyes that were persistently turned away from him, while he continued:
“You know well enough all I think of you, Eva! The first time we met you wiled my heart away with one look of your big, innocent dark eyes, like a wondering child’s, and I have been in your toils ever since! But I tried to be patient. I waited till you had seen the world and had had your pick and choice of lovers, and refused one after another till I thought: ‘I will speak now, for there may be a chance for me.’ Is there, little Eva? Do you love me? Will you be my wife?”
She knew it all before, as he said; all his love and his hopes. How could she help it when his devotion was so plain?
And the pain of refusing him, the sorrow of dashing his hopes to earth, shook her heart with such pity that she did not know how to answer him; her tongue seemed to cleave to the roof of her mouth.
“You do not speak, my darling!” he added anxiously. “Why do you turn your eyes away? Are you coquetting with me? Does silence give consent?”
“Oh, no, no!” she managed to blurt out, in her alarm lest he consider himself accepted.
Reginald Hamilton’s face paled to the hue of ashes at those words from Eva’s lips, and, gripping the lines more tightly to restrain the spirited prancing of the grays that hindered hearing, he muttered eagerly: