'I do more; I love you,' he answered hotly. And his eyes burned as he looked at her. 'You are fit to be a queen, my queen! And if I live, sweet cousin, I will make you one!'
'Let that go by,' she said contemptuously, bearing up against his look of admiration as well as she could and continuing to move, so that he had to walk also. 'What you do not understand is my nature--which is, not to desert my friends when they are in trouble, nor to play when those who have served me faithfully are missing.'
'I can help neither the one nor the other,' he answered. But his brow began to darken, and he stood silent a moment. Then he broke out in a different tone. 'By Heaven!' he said, 'I am in no mood for play. And I think that you are playing with me!'
'I do not understand you!' she said. Her tone should have frozen him.
'I have asked a question. Will you answer me yes or no,' he persisted. 'Will you be my wife, or will you not?'
She did not blench. 'This is rather rough wooing, is it not?' she said with fine scorn.
'This is a camp, and I am a soldier.'
She shrugged her shoulders. 'I do not think I like rough ways,' she said.
He controlled himself by a mighty effort. 'Pardon me,' he said with a sickly smile, which sat ill on his flushed and angry face. 'Perhaps I am somewhat spoiled, and forget myself. But, like the man in the Bible, I am accustomed to say to some, "Go," and they go, and to others, "Do it," and it is done. And woe to those who disobey me. Possibly this makes me a rough wooer. But, Countess, the ways of the world are rough; the times are rough. We do not know what to-morrow will bring forth, and whatever we want we want quickly. More, sweetheart,' he continued, drawing a step nearer to her and speaking in a voice he vainly strove to modulate, 'a little roughness before marriage is better than ill-treatment afterwards. I have known men who wooed on their knees bring their wives to theirs very quickly after the knot was tied. I am not of that kind.'
My lady's heart sickened. Despite the assurance of his last words, she saw the man as he was; she read his will in his eyes; and though his sudden frankness was in reality the result of overmastering excitement, she had the added horror of supposing it to be dictated by her friendless position and the absence of the last men who might have protected her. She knew that her only hope lay in her courage, and, though her heart leapt under her bodice, she faced him boldly.