"How shall I thank you? And I have been so impertinent and cross! Perhaps I owe even my life to you!"
"I have not done it for nothing, I can tell you, young lady. I have been thinking of my repayment all through it."
He put his arm round her before she could get away, and drew her close to him. His voice became low and tender; his face, bent to hers, was radiant with persuasive eloquence.
"I told you last night that I thought I had saved you from a great danger----"
"And you repaid yourself," interrupted Georgina, with a dash of her native sauciness, and a glow on her blushing cheeks.
"No, I did not. I--don't know whether it's this watching after your safety, or what else it may be; but I have arrived at the conviction, that I shall have to take care of you for life. Georgina, we might have known years ago that it would come to this."
"Known that! When you only hated me!"
"If I hated you then--which I did not--I love you now. I cannot part with you. Georgina, my darling, I shall never part with you. I don't think you would like to part with me."
Her heart beat as it had never beaten before in her life; her eyes were blinded with tears. Joy so great as this had never been foreshadowed, except in some rare dream. He kissed the tears away.
"But it cannot be that you love me," she whispered.