Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/51

 much beyond the common, my native power should yet assert itself. Wherefore I drew myself to my fullest inches, tipped up my chin and throat a little to let him see what snow and dimples are, and what a provocation poets sometimes undergo. Then I met those fine eyes of his fully with mine own. On this occasion 'twas his that did recoil. Nor was this at all remarkable, since Mr. Horace Walpole had informed me but a week before, for the fifteenth time, that if these my orbs should confront the sun at any time, the sun would be diminished and put out. Thus the rebel's own high look yielded reluctantly to mine, and I judged by the twitching of his mouth that 'twas as much as he could do to suppress his wonder and his thankfulness. But he did in lieu of that a thing that was even yet more graceful.

Without a word he fell on his knees before the feet of his releaser, and when I deigned to give my hand to him that he might touch it with his lips, as I thought his delicious silence not unworthy of reward, my every finger thrilled beneath the one burning tear that issued from his fine, brave eyes and plashed upon them softly.

"Madam," he said then, with his voice all passion-broken and shaking so that it must have given him an agony to speak, "a word can never thank you. May I thank you some time otherwise?"

The moonlight was much our friend in this strange passage, here amongst the straw of a cold, gloomy, and unclean stable at an unheard-of hour of night. Pouring through the window it wrapped