“Why, Sheila?” he said, staring.
“She cares for you more than you can think: I saw it to-night in everything she said and did.”
“I thought she was just a trifle saucy, do you know. She shunted me out of the conversation altogether.”
Sheila shook her head and smiled. “She was embarrassed. She suspects that you like her, and that I know it, and that I came to see her. If you ask her to marry you she will do it gladly.”
“Sheila,” Ingram said, with a severity that was not in his heart, “you must not say such things. You might make fearful mischief by putting these wild notions into people’s heads.”
“They are not wild notions,” she said, quietly. “A woman can tell what another woman is thinking about better than a man.”
“And am I to go to the Tyrol and ask her to marry me?” he said, with the air of a meek scholar.
“I should like to see you married—very, very much, indeed,” Sheila said.
“And to her?”
“Yes, to her,” the girl said frankly. “For I am sure she has great regard for you, and she is clever enough to put value on—on—but I cannot flatter you, Mr. Ingram.”