OU are frightening me, Beppo! We have been out long enough. Let us go home.”
Lily Fairfield was speaking in a very quiet, level voice, but her face looked white and strained.
Beppo had stopped the motor beside a steep and lonely mountain gorge; and now he was pouring a torrent of violent, passionate words of love into her ear. As soon as his hand was free he had grasped her left wrist as in a vice, and now he was trying to force her to look round at him.
But she went on staring before her, a look of endurance and growing fear on her pale face.
“There is nothing to be frightened of, Lily. Do you not understand that I love you? I love you as an Indian devotee worships his idol! You are in no danger from me. I should not have spoken to you to-day had you not seemed so gentle and so kind. I thought your cold heart might be melting a little—that you might be feeling touched by my silent devotion! Now that I am going away so soon—surely I may speak? What is there between us—what is that menacing shadow that always rises up when I speak to you, God knows with infinite reverence and respect, of my love for you?”
He was speaking in broken, agitated, pleading tones, and yet there was an underlying touch of fierceness in his voice which in very truth did terrify the girl. And the expression on his face had so changed that he seemed a savage stranger, rather than a friend.
She knew that they were miles and miles from La Solitude—for all she knew, miles and miles away from any human habitation—and she was sick with fear and distress. She felt as if she was dealing with a madman.
She asked herself, in, a kind of agony, if it would be right to temporise, to soothe him down, to tell him that perhaps in time she would become as he wished her to be.
And then the image of Angus Stuart rose before her. No, she could not be, even for a few moments, false to their love.
“Only tell me that I may hope,” he reiterated urgently, “and I will compel you to love me! Nay,”—as he saw her shrink back—“I will teach you most gently, most devotedly, to allow me to love you! That is all that I ask—it is not much, surely?”
She turned round and faced him, but seeing his convulsed face and blazing eyes, her heart almost stopped beating with fright. She forced herself to say, very quietly: “If you will let go my hand, Beppo, I will speak to you.”
He relaxed his strong, painful, grip of her soft wrist.
“Forgive me!” he exclaimed. “I fear I hurt you—but Lily, I am mad—mad for love of you!” and he covered his face with his hands.
“Believe me when I say that I am grateful for your love”
Poor Lily! She stopped dead, for she did not know what more to say. She would have given years of her life to end this painful, to her this agonising, scene. And the still, lonely beauty of the country round her seemed to mock her distress.
“God bless you for saying that!” exclaimed Beppo fervently. “Lily! My sweet snow-like angel—do not be angry if I ask you to grant me one great, supreme favour”
Lily looked at him wonderingly. He spoke more like his old self, but he was gazing at her with supplicating eyes. What was he going to say now? He had already implored her to marry him—already implored her to try and love him—to allow him to love her—to give him time to prove his love for her! What was there left to ask for? A supreme favour? What a strange expression! He had been talking—for how long was it? she had lost count of time—ten minutes, a quarter of an hour, half an hour?—it had seemed an eternity to her—in so extravagant and wild a way that there seemed nothing left for him to say.
“What is it?” she asked uncertainly. “I would do a great deal to please you, Beppo, if only—if only”—her voice faltered—“if only you would be reasonable.”
He was looking at her now intently, almost as if he were trying to hypnotise her, with those strange, brilliant blue eyes of his.
“The favour I ask,” he said at last, and in a very low voice, “I ask, Lily, as a man prays for a saint's intercession—on my knees. Do not be offended—do not be what you in England called 'shocked.' It is not a very great thing that I ask of you—yet to me it will be the greatest thing in the world. It is a thing which many a woman is quite willing to give—a friend.”
He stopped, and Lily, looking at him puzzled, asked hesitatingly: “What is it, Beppo? You know I would do anything in reason to please you.”
“All I ask for,” he said at last, “is the privilege”
“Yes?” said Lily. “What privilege, Beppo?”
He did not answer at once, and when at last he spoke, his voice had dropped almost to a whisper.