Page:Anthony Hope - The Kings Mirror.djvu/265

 "Then we'll tell everybody." I saw her looking at me with earnest anxiety. "My dear," said I, "I'll do what I can to make you happy."

We began to walk back through the wood side by side. Less on my guard than I ought to have been, I allowed myself to fall into a reverie. My thoughts fled back to previous love-makings, and, having travelled through these, fixed themselves on Varvilliers. It was but two days since I sent him a letter almost asserting that the task was impossible to achieve. He would laugh when he heard of its so speedy accomplishment. I began in my own mind to tell him about it, for I had come to like telling him my states of feeling, and no doubt often bored him with them; but he seemed to understand them, and in his constant minimizing of their importance I found a comfort. I had indeed almost followed the advice he would have given me—almost taken her up and kissed her, and there ended the matter. A low laugh escaped from me.

"Why are you laughing?" Elsa asked, turning to me with a puzzled look.

"I've been so very much afraid of you," I answered.

"You afraid of me!" she cried. "Oh, if you only knew how terrified I've been!" She seemed to be seized with an impulse to confidence. "It was terrible coming here to see whether I should do, you know."

"You knew you'd do!"

"Oh, no. Mother always told me I mightn't. She said you were—were rather peculiar."

"I don't know enough about other people to be able to say whether I'm peculiar."

She laughed, but not as though she saw any point