"Do you reject the equal alliance I offer, Miss Herold?"
"I?" She flushed. "It is very kind of you to put it that way. But I am
only your guide—but it is pleasant to have you speak that way."
"What way?"
"The way you spoke about—your bayman's daughter."
He said, smilingly cool on the surface, but in a chaotic, almost idiotic inward condition: "I've sat here for days, wishing all the while that I might really know you. Would you care to let me, Miss Herold?"
"Know me?" she repeated. "I don't think I understand."
"Could you and your father and brother regard me as a guest—as a friend visiting the family?"
"Why?"
"Because," he said, "I'm the same kind of a man that you are a girl and