“You are an angel to me, anyhow!”
A little pause, while she looks straight into his eyes, with the prettiest, faintest pink colour creeping over her cheeks.
“I say, Hargreaves, how long are we going on like this?” she asks abruptly.
He gazes at her amazed, and Baby laughs again, a little, low, musical laugh that entrances him.
“I mean that—that—as we care for one another, why should we pretend not to?” she asks in a hushed voice, putting her hand on her pommel, for the chesnut pricks up his ears and frightens her. Hargreaves’ hand is on hers in a second. He is really rather nervous about the horse after Challen’s warning, and besides, it is Heaven to him to feel the soft velvety skin of the dainty little hand that gleams up like a morsel of alabaster statuary under the sunlight.
“Miss Mirabelle, for God’s sake don’t go and make me forget what I am. I try night and day to remember the distance between us, and though I could go down on my knees and worship you all my life—though I could die for you willingly—willingly, I know I dare not live for you! I love you—there! Only God knows how I love you, but it isn’t a love like a fellow gives to his sweetheart! It’s a love like a faithful dog, that would lick your pretty hand and be content; that would watch over you so that no harm came near you; that would just lie down and die by the side of your grave.”
Baby listens with an involuntary tear twinkling in her eye. She is only seventeen, but she has been too long in a Belgravian world not to know that this young fellow loves her with a beautiful, unselfish, honest love—the like of which no Belgravian fine gentleman would feel. This primitive, self-abnegatory sort of courtship is so novel that it has a glamour for her, and Baby is—undoubtedly—a little fast.
“I would rather live and find out how much you do love me, Hargreaves,” she answers, with a tender smile; “do you think you love me to—to—the extent—of—marrying me?”
“Miss Mirabelle!” he gasps.
The veins swell on his forehead, his eyes fix on her with a bewildered look, and his breath comes quick and fast. Then he droops his head, and a forlorn expression sweeps over his white face.