“Madame,” he said, with a touch of the ballroom, “you may miscall me as you will; I deserve it all. I have been brutal; I have frightened you—that would not harm a hair of your head for a million pounds; I have disgraced the hospitality of your father’s house. I may have ruined myself in your eyes, and to-morrow I’ll writhe for it, but now—but now—I have but one plea: I love you! I’ll say it, though you struck me dumb for ever.”
She recovered a little, looked curiously at him, and “Is it not something of a liberty, even that?” she asked. “You bring the manners of the Inn to my father’s house.” The recollection of her helplessness in his grasp came to her again, and stained her face as it had been with wine.
He turned his hat in his hand, eyeing her dubiously but more calmly than before.
“There you have me,” he said, with a large and helpless gesture, “I am not worth two of your most trivial words. I am a common rude soldier that has not, as it were, seen you till a moment ago, and when I was at your—at your lips, I should have been at your shoes.”
She laughed disdainfully a little.
“Don’t do that,” said he, “you make me mad.” Again the tumult of his passion swept him down; he put a foot forward as if to approach her, but stopped short as by an immense inward effort. “Nan, Nan, Nan,” he cried so loudly that a more watchful father would have heard it outside. “Nan, Nan, Nan, I must say it if I die for it: I love you! I never felt—I do not know—I cannot tell what ails me, but you are mine!” Then all at once again his mood and accent changed. “Mine! What can I give? What can I offer? Here’s a poor ensign, and never a war with chances in it!”
He strode up and down the room, throwing his shadow, a feverish phantom, on the blind, and Nan looked at him as if he had been a man in a play. Here was her first lover with a vengeance! They might be all like that; this madness, perhaps, was the common folly. She remembered that to him she owed her life, and she was overtaken by pity.
“Let us say no more about it,” she said calmly. “You alarmed me very much, and I hope you will never do the like again. Let me think I myself was willing”—he started—“that it was some—some playful way of paying off the score I owe you.”
“What score?” said he, astonished. “You saved my life,” she answered, all resentment gone. “Did I?” said he. “It would be the last plea I would offer here and now. That was a boy’s work, or luck as it might be; this is a man before you. I am not wanting gratitude, but something far more ill to win. Look at me,” he went on; “I am Highland, I’m a soldier, I’m a man. You may put me to the door (my mother in heaven would not blame you), but still you’re mine.”
He was very handsome as he stood upon the floor resolute, something of the savage and the dandy, a man compelling. Nan felt the tremor of an admiration, though the insult was yet burning on her countenance.