A quick, remorseful pain runs through my heart.
"But you are not by yourself any longer," I cry, eagerly. "Why do you talk as if you were? Do you count me for nothing?"
"For nothing?" he answers, smiling quietly. "I am glad of an excuse to be rid of you for a bit—that is it!"
"But is that it?" cry I, excitedly, rising and running round to him. "If you are sure of that—if you will swear it to me—I will not say another word. I will hold my tongue, and try to bear as well as I can, your having grown tired of me so soon—but—" speaking more slowly, and hesitating, "if—if—it is that you fancied—you thought—you imagined—that I did not want to come with you—"
"My dear," he says, laughing not at all bitterly, but with a genuine amusement, "I should have been even less bright than I am, if I had not gathered that much."
I sink down on a chair, and cover my face with my hands. My attitude is the same as it was ten minutes ago, but oh, how different are my feelings! What bitter repentance, what acute self-contempt, invade my soul! As I so sit, I feel an arm round my waist.
"Nancy," says Sir Roger, "it was ill-naturedly said; do not fret about it; you were not in the least to blame. I should not like you half so much—should not think nearly so well of you, if you had been willing to give up all your own people, to throw them lightly over, all of a sudden, for a comparative stranger, treble your age, too"—(with a sigh)—"like me."
He generously ignores the selfish fear of sea-sickness, of personal suffering, which had occupied the fore-front of my mind.
"It will be much, much better, and a far more sensible plan for both of us," he continues, cheerfully. "Where would be the use of exposing you to the discomfort and misery of what you hate most on earth for no possible profit? I shall not be long away, shall be back almost before you realize that I am gone, and meanwhile I should be far happier thinking of you merry, and enjoying yourself with your brothers and sisters at Tempest, than I should be seeing you bored and suffering, with no one but me to amuse you—you know, dear—" (smiling pensively); "do not be angry with me, it was no fault of yours; but you did grow rather tired of me at Dresden."
"I did not! I did not!" cry I, bursting into a passion of tears, and asseverating all the more violently because I feel, with a sting of remorse, that there is a tiny grain of truth—not so large a one as he thinks, but still a grain in his accusations. "It seemed rather quiet at first—I had always been used to such a noisy house, and I missed the boys' chatter a little, perhaps; but indeed, INDEED, that was all!"