For a moment she stepped back. “No!” she protested, raising her hands to push him off. “Please—please let me think.”
He let her be, for already he knew that he had won; and perhaps in his own mind he was beginning to doubt the wisdom of the step. “My uncle? Have you thought of him?” she asked. “What will he say?”
“I have not thought of him,” he cried grandly, “and I am not going to think of him. I am thinking, my dear, only of you. Do you love me?”
She stood silent, gazing at him.
“Don’t play with me!” he said. “I’ve a right to an answer.”
“I think I do,” she said softly. “Yes—I think—no, wait; that is not all.”
“It is all.”
“No,” between laughing and crying. “You are not giving me time. I want to think. You are carrying me by storm, sir.”
“And a good way, too!” he rejoined. Then she did let him take her, and for a few seconds she was in his arms. He crushed her to him, she felt all the world turning. But before he found her lips, the crack of a whip startled them, the creak of a wheel sliding round the corner warned them, she slipped from his arms.
“You little wretch!” he said.