"He doesn't. I know he doesn't!"
She spoke with her eyes upon the ground, her voice sunk very low. She
felt as if she were being drawn down from the heights she desired to
tread. She did not want to contemplate the problems that she knew very
surely awaited her upon the lower level. She did not want to quit her
sanctuary before the time.
Sir Eustace received her assurance in silence, but he kept her hand in
his, and the power of his personality seemed to penetrate to the very
centre of her being.
He spoke at last almost under his breath, still closely watching her
downcast face. "Are you quite sure you still care for him--in that way?"
She made a quick, appealing gesture. "Oh, need I answer that? I feel
so--ashamed."
"No, you needn't answer," he made steady reply. "But you've nothing to be
ashamed about. Stumpy's an awful ass, you know,--always has been. He's
been head over heels in love with you ever since he met you. No, you
needn't let that shock you. He's such a bashful knight he'll never tell
you so. You'll have to do that part of it." He smiled with faint irony.
"But you may take my word for it, it is so. He has thought of nothing but
you and your happiness from the very beginning of things. And--unlike
someone else we know--he has had the decency always to put your happiness
first."
He paused. Dinah's eyes had flashed up to his, green, eager, intensely
alive, and behind those eyes her soul seemed to be straining like a thing
in leash.
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