He breathed fast and with difficulty.
"Rona!" he said, in a whisper.
She started from her own sad, absorbed meditations. She turned her eyes to him, with a dumb appeal in them for mercy. There was something so sorrowful in the look that it acted like fire upon his senses.
"I can't—I can't!" he said, under his breath. "It's too hard. I can't let you go. I shall tell him to turn the horses, and we will go away—together."
She looked at him, all the blood in her body rushing to her heart. They were sitting side by side, but not close together. Now her body seemed to lean towards him; her eyes were alight, her lips parted slightly. But a look of mortal fear clouded the eagerness of her sweet face. She raised her hands with a pitiful gesture of entreaty.
"Oh, hush, don't! No, Felix, no, I trust you. You can't——"
She broke off with a gulping sob, snatching her handkerchief to her mouth lest the driver should hear, and turn his keen black eyes upon her weakness and misery. But the driver was gazing along the road ahead, his eyes shaded. Something had attracted his attention. Felix was too absorbed to notice. He did not speak, but he leant towards her, one clenched hand upon the seat between them, and relentlessly held her eyes with his own. His teeth were set. He knew she could not hold out for long if he set his will upon it.
"You said," she voiced, almost inaudibly—"you said—that I might trust you."
"Yes," he answered, in the same tone. "Will you? Trust me altogether? For always?"
The driver dropped his hand, and, making a violent motion along the road, pointed, shouting something in an excited way.