"Oh, I shall go north, too," she observed calmly.
"Into battle, for example?" I asked, amused.
"I shall certainly not let you go into battle all alone! You are a mere child when it comes to taking precaution in danger."
"You mean you would actually gallop into battle to see I came to no mischief?" I demanded, laughing.
"Aye, clip my hair and dress the trooper, jack-boots and all, if you drive me to it!" she exclaimed, irritated. "You may as well know it, Carus; you shall not go floundering about alone, and that's flat! See what a mess of it you were like to make in New York!"
"Then," said I, still laughing, yet touched to the heart, "I shall instruct you in the duties and amenities of wedded life, and we may as well marry and be done with it. Once married, I, of course, shall do as I please in the matter of battles——"
"No, you shall not! You shall consider me! Do you think to go roaming about, nose in the air, and leaving me to sit quaking at home, crying my eyes out over your foolishness? Do I not already know the terror of it with you in New York there, and only ten minutes to save your neck from Cunningham? Thank you, I am already instructed in the amenities of wedded life—if they be like the pleasures of betrothal—though I cared not a whit what happened to Walter Butler, it is true, yet fell sick o' worry when you and Rosamund Barry went a-sailing—not that I feared you'd drown, either. O Carus, Carus, you distract me, you worry me; you tell me nothing, nothing, and I never knew what you were about there in New York when you were not with me!—doubtless a-courting every petticoat on Hanover Square, for all I know!"
"Well," said I, amazed and perplexed, "if you think, under the circumstances, there is any prospect of our falling in love after marriage, and so continuing, I will wed you—now——"
"No!" she interrupted angrily; "I shall not marry you, nor even betroth myself. It may be that I can see you leave me and bid you a fair journey, unmoved. I would to God I could! I feel that way now, and may continue, if I do not fall a-pondering, and live over certain hours with you that plague me at times into a very passion. But at moments like this I weary of you, so that all you say and do displeases, and I'm sick of the world and I know not what! O Carus, I am sick of life—and I dare not tell you why!"
She rested her head on her hands, staring down at her blurred image, reflected in the polished table-top.