“Hardly,” Zarka replied with a tolerant smile. He was not playing the game with this dull, uninteresting old soldier, but with his step-daughter. Presently the opportunity came for which he had waited. Harlberg left them together.
“You have passed through a great danger to-day, Fräulein,” Zarka said, changing his manner to one of intensely sympathetic interest. “I blame myself that it is I who am indirectly responsible for it. I wish you would give me the right to protect you from all these risks in future.”
“I am not likely,” she replied coldly, ignoring his tone of caress, “to put myself in the way of such danger again.”
“From wild animals, no; let us hope not. But from men hardly less dangerous. You cannot feel safe there.”
“I hope,” she rejoined, “my life will not be passed in a place like this, where protection seems so necessary.”
He leaned forward. “Why should it not?” he asked earnestly. “Why should it not, much of it, be passed here, as mistress of Rozsnyo?”
She rose, not trusting herself to look at him. “No, no,” she answered. “That cannot be.”
“It may be, easily,” he persisted, following her. “You have only to say the little word, Yes. You will say it, Philippa? You must know how devotedly I love you. Dearest, you will be my wife?”
She shook her head. “I cannot be.”
“Ah!” he cried impatiently, “you do not know what you say. You will be my wife, be queen of this great forest, and of all that is mine.”