"I!"
"Yes," he says, pausing in his walk in front of me, and looking at me with a face full of sunshine, content, and laughter; a face whence hurricanes, West Indies, and agents have altogether fled; "you called me a 'beast', and the expression startled me so much—I suppose from not being used to it—that it sent the West Indies, yes, and the East ones too, clean out of my head."
"I hope," say I, anxiously, "that you will never tell any one that I said that. They would think that I was in the habit of calling people 'beasts', and indeed—indeed, I very seldom use so strong a word, even to Bobby."
"Well," he says, not heeding my request, not, I am sure, hearing it, and resuming his walk, "what is done cannot be undone, so there is no use whining about it, Nancy" (again stopping before me, and this time taking my face in his two hands). "Will you mind much, or will you not?—do you ever mind any thing much, I wonder?" (eagerly and wistfully scanning my face, as if trying to read my character through the mask of my pale skin, and small and unremarkable features). "Well, there is no help for it—as I did not go then, I must go now."
"Go!" repeat I, panting in horrid surprise, "go where?—to Antigua?"
"Yes, to Antigua."
No need now to dress my voice in the tones of factitious tragedy—no need to lengthen my face artificially. It feels all of a sudden quite a yard and a half long. Polly has stopped barking: he is now calling, "Barb'ra! Barb'ra!" in father's voice, and he hits off the pompous severity of his tone with such awful accuracy, that did not my eyes assure me to the contrary, I could swear that my parent was in the room.
After a moment I rise, throw my arms round Sir Roger, and lay my head on his breast—a most unwonted caress on my part, for we are not a couple by any means given to endearments.
"Do not go!" I say in a coaxing whisper, "do nothing of the kind!—stay at home!"
"And will you go instead of me?" he asks with a gentle irony, stroking, the while, my plaits as delicately as if he were afraid that they would come off, which indeed, indeed, they would not.