“Then I will never say another word about it; but people should not take advantage.”
“Who are people? How you talk! quite as if I were somebody you never saw before. I should like you just to look round now, and let me see why you are so different from yourself.”
Mary Anerley looked round; for she always did what people liked, without good reason otherwise; and if her mind was full of clouds, her eyes had little sign of them.
“You look as lovely as you always do,” said the smuggler, growing bolder as she looked at something else. “You know long ago what my opinion of you is, and yet you seem to take no notice. Now I must be off, as you know, to-night; not for any reason of my own, as I told you yesterday, but to carry out a contract. I may not see you for many months again; and you may fall in love with a Preventive man.”
“I never fall in love with anybody. Why should I go from one extreme to the other? Captain Carroway has seven children, as well as a very active wife.”
“I am not afraid of Carroway, in love or in war. He is an honest fellow, with no more brains than this ash-tree over us. I mean the dashing captains who come in with their cutters, and would carry you off as soon as look.”
“Captain Lyth, you are not at all considering what you say: those officers do not want me—they want you.”
“Then they shall get neither; they may trust me for that. But, Mary, do tell me how your heart is; you know well how mine has been for ever such a time. I tell you downright that I have thought of girls before—”
“Oh, I was not at all aware of that; surely you had better go on with thinking of them.”
“You have not heard me out. I have only thought of them; nothing more than thinking, in a foolish sort of way. But of you I do not think; I seem to feel you all through me.”