“Nothing, but I am not likely to trust my future to a man of whom such tales are told. Auntie! Would you, supposing that you were——”
“I will have none of your suppositions, I never did wear a rush apron, nor act as Jack Pudding.”
“I cannot—Captain Cruel of all men.”
“Is he so hateful to you?”
“Hateful—no; but I cannot like him. He has been kind, but—somehow I can’t think of him as—as—as a man of our class and thoughts and ways, as one worthy of my own, own papa. No—it is impossible, I am still a child.”
She took the end of the peacock’s feather, the splendid eye lustrous with metallic beauty, and bowed the plume without breaking it, and, unconscious of what she was doing, stroked her lips with it. What a fragile fine quill that was on which hung so much beauty? and how worthless the feather would be when that quill was broken. And so with her—her fine, elastic, strong spirit, that when bowed sprang to its uprightness the moment the pressure was withdrawn; that on which all her charm, her beauty hung.
“Captain Coppinger has, surely, never asked you to put this alternative to me?”
“No—I do it myself. As you are a child, you are unfit to take charge of your brother. When you are engaged to be married you are a woman; I shift my load on you then.”
“I repeat I have no wishes in the matter.”