"What nonsense!" Lady Betty answered; but her gaze fell before his.
"Do you remember," he ventured, "what it was I said of your eyes?"
"Of my eyes?" she cried, recovering herself. "No; of the maid's eyes, if you please. There was some nonsense said of them, I remember."
"It was all true of your eyes!" Tom said, gathering courage and fluency. "It's true of them now! And all I said to the maid, I say to you. And I wish, oh, I wish you were the maid again!"
"That you might be rude to me, I suppose?" she answered, tracing a figure with her fan on the horseblock.
"No," Tom cried. "That I might show you how much I love you. That I might get nothing by you but yourself. Oh, Betty, give me a little hope! Say that--that some day I shall--I shall kiss you again."
Betty, blushing and but half disdainful, studied the ground with a gravity that was not natural to her.
"Well, perhaps--in a year," she faltered. "Always supposing that you kiss no one in the meantime, sir."
"A year, a whole year, Betty!" Tom protested.
"Yes, a year, not a day less," she answered firmly. "You are only a boy. You don't know your own mind. I don't know yet whether you would treat me well. And for waiting, I'll have no one kiss me," Betty continued, steadfastly, "that cannot wait and wait, and doesn't think me worth the waiting. So, sir, if you wish to show that you are a man, you must show it by waiting."