“Well, then,” he said, “look here. You are very pretty. I never saw a face I like so much as yours. I am anxious that you should understand that, because it is my wish to have the opportunity of gazing upon it as often as possible. Now you are perpetually drawing that infernal needle backwards and forwards, from morning until night, making your pretty face pale and ‘eyelids weary and worn,’ and all that sort of thing. Now my notion is——”
“To compliment me——” interposed Lotte.
“Yes,” interrupted Malcolm, eagerly, in his turn, “to take you away from this place, throw the needle to the devil, place you in a pretty country house, own servants, brougham——”
“And convert me from a humble, virtuous needlewoman into a shameless and an abandoned outcast,” cried Lotte, firmly, and in clear tones.
“No, upon my honour——” he cried.
“Mr. Grahame, I have not spoken to you previous to this hour; but if I had proposed as soon as we met, that you should become a thief, a degraded and criminal rogue, you would consider that I had inflicted an insulting outrage upon your honour, and you would ask me indignantly, what there was in your conduct and your appearance that called forth so great and undeserved an affront.”
“Yes, clearly, but——”
“May I ask of what I have been guilty, that you should so—so insult me?”
She could not keep down the tears which would spring into her eyes. He perceived them, and said excitedly——
“I don’t want to make you cry. I don’t upon my—upon my—by heaven! I don’t want to insult you.”