“Yes, I remembered a little and insisted on being told the whole story.”
“Will you tell me what you remember?” I urged.
She passed beneath the head of the hammock, and walking up to the hedge, plucked a piece of the pink geranium-bloom. Turning to me with a shy smile she held it out towards me.
“I will give you this pretty flower,” she said lightly, “if you will never speak about it again—it was all so absurd.”
“I’m not joking, Miss Grey,” I said half angrily; “I must know—I will know.” I had a horrible fear that could only be dispelled by the knowledge that she could account for all the acts of that infernal wizard.
The smile faded from her lips. She drew herself up and anger darted from her black eyes.
“You dare to ask me what I do not choose to tell?” she said, and never was a man so withered in spirit by a look from a woman’s eyes as I was then. What was the mystery in them? They seemed to belong not to this age, but to be looking at me from the beginning of the world. For a moment I could hardly understand that they should be set in the lovely face before me.
But the flash of anger passed, and, before I could falter a crestfallen apology, she said, “Forgive me; I was forgetting all I owe to you. My temper was too hasty.”
“I think I was too hasty in demanding to know what did not concern me,” I ventured. “Perhaps I have been too hasty all along in meddling with affairs that——”
“Ah! don’t say that,” she broke in, with a sharp pain in her voice; “you have found me a father, you will give me back my mother, and I—I have spoken angrily to you.” A tear glistened on her lashes; her bosom heaved beneath the white folds of her dress, and in her eyes was a tender light of love.