"I PURPOSELY STUMBLED AGAINST HER ARM AND UPSET THE GLASS INTO WHICH HE HAD PUT THE POWDER."
I leaned back against the cushions at my companion's side, and looked at her cautiously. The tears had ceased, her eyes were closed, and though her mouth still quivered from time to time, her breathing gradually grew quieter and her breast still. I felt extraordinarily lifted up at the sight of her; she was so young, so sweet, so tenderly fashioned. Her left hand lay in her lap, and I saw that there was no wedding ring upon it; I had been certain before that the man had lied. I was so moved by her nearness to me that I could not refrain from touching her fingers. They closed upon mine for a happy second.
"My protector," she murmured.
In half an hour, when my heat had had time to cool, I began to reflect upon the strangeness of my situation, and it was certainly sufficiently awkward to make me serious. Here was I, a young bachelor, on my way to my uncle's house, whose daughter I was to marry, and in my carriage was a girl, young and pretty, and of a most engaging person, whose name I did not know, whose gallant, or abductor, or whatever he was, I had incontinently wounded, and whose simplicity, apparently, was so profound that she was as contented in my hands as she might have been in her mother's.
By this time she appeared to be asleep, and I had not the heart to call her back to knowledge of the speeding carriage and her world of sorrows. But at last, when we were some dozen miles or so upon our way, I thought it best to try to bring matters to an issue. I touched her hand again, and again her fingers answered mine; she had not been asleep after all!
"Madam," I said, "we are now travelling southward, and if your home lies in this direction I will bid my men drive you there."
"Oh, no, no; not home!" she cried.
"Where, then, if not home?"