Agatha Webb Read Online Free PDF Page B

expressions.
    "I am sensible of the honour," said he, "but hardly understand how
I have earned it."
    Still that incomprehensible look of admiration continued to
illumine her face.
    "I did not know I could ever think so well of you," she declared.
"If you do not take care, I shall end by loving you some day."
    "Ah!" he ejaculated, his face contracting with sudden pain; "your
love, then, is but a potentiality. Very well, Amabel, keep it so
and you will be spared much misery. As for me, who have not been
as wise as you—"
    "Frederick!" She had come so near he did not have the strength to
finish. Her face, with its indefinable charm, was raised to his,
as she dropped these words one by one from her lips in lingering
cadence: "Frederick—do you love me, then, so very much?"
    He was angry; possibly because he felt his resolution failing him.
"You know!" he hotly began, stepping back. Then with a sudden
burst of feeling, that was almost like prayer, he resumed: "Do not
tempt me, Amabel. I have trouble enough, without lamenting the
failure of my first steadfast purpose."
    "Ah!" she said, stopping where she was, but drawing him toward her
by every witchery of which her mobile features were capable; "your
generous impulse has strengthened into a purpose, has it? Well,
I'm not worth it, Frederick."
    More and more astounded, understanding her less than ever, but
charmed by looks that would have moved an anchorite, he turned his
head away in a vain attempt to escape an influence that was so
rapidly undermining his determination.
    She saw the movement, recognised the weakness it bespoke, and in
the triumph of her heart allowed a low laugh to escape her.
    Her voice, as I have before said, was unmusical though effective;
but her laugh was deliciously sweet, especially when it was
restrained to a mere ripple, as now.
    "You will come to Springfield soon," she avowed, slipping from
before him so as to leave the way to the door open.
    "Amabel!" His voice was strangely husky, and the involuntary
opening and shutting of his hands revealed the emotion under which
he was labouring. "Do you love me? You have acknowledged it now
and then, but always as if you did not mean it. Now you
acknowledge that you may some day, and this time as if you did
mean it. What is the truth? Tell me, without coquetry or
dissembling, for I am in dead earnest, and—" He paused, choked,
and turned toward the window where but a few minutes before he had
taken that solemn oath. The remembrance of it seemed to come back
with the movement. Flushing with a new agitation, he wheeled upon
her sharply. "No, no," he prayed, "say nothing. If you swore you
did not love me I should not believe it, and if you swore that you
did I should only find it harder to repeat what must again be
said, that a union between us can never take place. I have given
my solemn promise to—"
    "Well, well. Why do you stop? Am I so hard to talk to that the
words will not leave your lips?"
    "I have promised my father I will never marry you. He feels that
he has grounds of complaint against you, and as I owe him
everything—"
    He stopped amazed. She was looking at him intently, that same low
laugh still on her lips.
    "Tell the truth," she whispered. "I know to what extent you
consider your father's wishes. You think you ought not to marry me
after what took place last night. Frederick, I like you for this
evidence of consideration on your part, but do not struggle too
relentlessly with your conscience. I can forgive much more in you
than you think, and if you really love me—"
    "Stop! Let us understand each other." He had turned mortally pale,
and met her eyes with something akin to alarm. "What do you allude
to in speaking of last night? I did not know there was anything
said by us in our talk together—"
    "I do not allude to our talk."
    "Or—or in the one dance we had—"
    "Frederick, a dance is innocent."
    The word seemed to strike him with the force of a blow.
    "Innocent," he repeated, "innocent?"