“Afraid, Gladys?”
“Yes, and please don’t drive your chariot too fast, even now. Why, if you had had the opportunities that have fallen to my lot, you would have been so far above me by this time that I should never have dared so much as to lift my eyes to you,” the young girl returned with mock humility.
He bent and looked earnestly into her eyes.
“Gladys,” he cried, under his breath, “I am sometimes almost glad that I was cast adrift upon the world.”
“Glad! Why, Geoff!” she exclaimed, astonished, and wondering at his intense mood.
“You think that rather an extravagant statement,” he said, smiling, “but if my life had run along smoothly in my own home, like that of other boys, I might never have learned what mettle there was within me, and besides, I might never have known you—you who have been my good genius and my inspiration.”
Gladys shot one startled glance up into those earnest eyes looking into hers, then her own quickly dropped, and a vivid scarlet shot up to her brow.
Geoffrey had never spoken like this to her before, and the suppressed passion in his voice betrayed volumes.
The unexpected glimpse of his heart set her own to beating with strange emotions.
She had always been fond of him in a sort of tender, compassionate way, which of late had developed into something of pride for his smartness, and the character he exhibited; but she had never dreamed that she could ever learn to regard him other than as a dear friend or brother, or that he would ever entertain but fraternal affection for her.