Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/197

 "Sir, you can, I think," says I, gazing at him with my brightest eyes.

He admitted the witchery of them, for he laughed and dropped his own.

"True," he sighed. "God help me!"

"This is no particular season for your prayers," I answered, softly, and sighed much the same as he. "Am I so much a devil then, or to be avoided like one? Had you been a brother I could not deplore your accident more tenderly."

"No, no; not that," says he.

"Perhaps, sir, you will explain?" says I, in full enjoyment of his uneasiness.

"I am afraid of liking you too well," he rejoined, with the soldier's bluntness. The prisoner's escape, I ought to tell you, had killed the fop.

"That all?" I exclaimed in sweet surprise. "Dear, dear! liking me too well—how singular!"

"Alas, too well!" he echoed, with a great appearance of high feeling, "for would you have me false to the King and to myself?"

"Oh, politics!" I laughed, but noted that damp beads were come upon the Captain's forehead. "And my dearest man," I added, "you behold in me the most harmless being—I that cannot suffer a rebel to be hanged—the most artless, harmless creature I assure you."

Poor wretch! I saw him wriggle in his bonds. 'Twas a very futile effort, as now I had drawn the cords so tight about him that he was laid submissive as a sheep. To-night, I think, a marble statue could