“I—I would—’T is my desire to—to say what you would have me.”
Both her hands were eagerly caught in those of the suppliant. “If you could—If—’T would be everything on earth— more than life itself to me—could you but give me the faintest hope that I might win you. Have you such an abhorrence of me that you cannot give me the smallest guerdon of happiness?”
“You err in supposing that I dislike you,” protested Janice.
“Then why do you refuse all that is dearest to me? Why turn from a devotion that would make your happiness its own?”
“But I have n’t,” denied the girl, her heart beating wildly and her breath coming quickly.
As the words passed her lips, she was impulsively yet tenderly caught in her lover’s arms and drawn to him. “What have you done, then?” he demanded almost fiercely.
“I—I—oh! I don’t know,” she gasped.
“Then, as you have pity in you, grant my prayer?”
For a moment Janice, with down-bent head, was silent. Then she raised her eyes to Jack’s and said, “I will marry you, Colonel Brereton, if dadda will let me.”