Letting her sink into the chair from which he had just risen, he
drew back a step, with his hands clasped before him, and his dark
half-savage eyes bent earnestly upon her. Well might he have
gazed. It was no longer the conscious beauty, proud and regnant,
seated before him; but a timid, frightened girl, struggling with
her first deep passion.
All that was wise and gentle that she had intended to say, all that
her clear intellect and experience had taught her, died upon her
lips with that kiss. And all that she could do of womanly dignity
and high-bred decorum was to tuck her small feet under her chair,
in the desperate attempt to lengthen her short skirt, and beg him
not to look at her.
"I have had to change dresses with Faquita, because we were
watched," she said, leaning forward in her chair and drawing the
striped shawl around her shoulders. "I have had to steal out of my
mother's house and through the fields, as if I was a gypsy. If I
only were a gypsy, Harry, and not--"
"And not the proudest heiress in the land," he interrupted, with
something of his old bitterness. "True, I had forgot."
"But I never reminded you of it," she said, lifting her eyes to
his. "I did not remind you of it on that day--in--in--in the
conservatory, nor at the time you first spoke of--of--love to me--
nor from the time I first consented to meet you here. It is YOU,
Harry, who have spoken of the difference of our condition, YOU who
have talked of my wealth, my family, my position--until I would
gladly have changed places with Faquita as I have garments, if I
had thought it would make you happier.
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