Sara stopped, partly with emotion, partly from her excessive reluctance to approach the topic. Should it prove to be altogether some mistake, a feeling of shame would rest upon her for having whispered it.
"It's what? Why don't you go on?"
"I must go on if I am to tell you," she resumed, rallying her courage. "Did you ever, before you went out--marry anybody?"
"Did I--what?" he returned, looking up with an exceedingly amused expression on his face.
"O Edward, you heard."
"If I heard I did not understand. What do you mean? Why do you ask me so foolish a question?"
"You have not answered it," she continued in a low voice.
Captain Davenal noted for the first time the changing hue of her face, the troubled eye, the shrinking, timid manner. His mood changed to seriousness.
"Sara, what do you mean? Did I marry anybody before I went out, you ask? I neither married anybody, nor promised marriage. I--Halloa! you don't mean that I am about to have a breach of promise brought against me?"
The notion was so amusing to Captain Davenal that he burst into a laugh. Sara shook her head; and when his laugh had subsided she bent her cheek upon her hand, and related to him, calmly and quietly, what had occurred. The Captain was excessively amused: he could not be brought to regard the tale in any other light than as a joke.