Page:A courier of fortune (1904).djvu/179

Rh cast, the thousand little acts and signs he had given while she had deemed him her cousin, had expressed real feeling. He had not looked on her as unmaidenly, but—and as the thought grafted itself more firmly upon her faith in him, the colour came flooding again to her cheeks, but from such different causes, and her eyes glowed.

"I thought" she said, about to give impulsive utterance to her new belief, when she checked herself, looked up with a smile of sweet confusion, and then again dropped her eyes.

Gerard had watched her closely trying to read the perplexing changes of her manner, fearing from her constraint and silence that she was angered; but gathered hope fast when she smiled.

"I would give much to know that thought," he said, when she faltered.

"You must not keep silence and run this risk for me," she said slowly, keeping her eyes upon the ground.

"Am I forgiven the deception I practised?" he whispered.

"Was it not done because you deemed it best for—for all things?"

She had meant to say "for me," but the words hung on her lips so that she could not utter them.

"For all things, no," he answered pointedly, "for you, yes; for you only."

It was sweet hearing. Her heart beat fast and her bosom rose and fell quickly in agitation. But she could not look at him, could not let him see yet how deeply he had stirred her. She had passed one crisis of racking pain when she feared that she had mistaken him; and shrank now from even a chance of misjudgment.

"I believe that," she said simply after a pause.

"And I am forgiven?" he pressed, eager for her to look at him, that he might read in her sweet eyes the knowledge for which his heart was hungering.