"I don't think you are," said Strause. "You are a delicate little thing, not a bit like your sister."
"Oh, Mollie is so strong--she is almost coarse," said Kitty.
"I don't think there is anything coarse about her. I wish you could have seen her the other morning. It was quite early, before daylight, and a poor chap was dying, and she sang to him."
"Oh, please don't tell me about dying people, it is so melancholy."
"May I ask, Miss Hepworth," said Strause, "why you came here at all?"
"Can't you guess?" she answered, and she flushed a very rosy red. "To be near Gavon."
"Yes, a good deal. He comes in most evenings. He has not been in yet to-night."
"You are desperately in love with him, aren't you?"
Kitty sighed, then she smiled, then she put up her hand to sweep away the curls from her forehead.
"Oh yes," she said then; "of course I am. We are going to be married."
"I wonder," said the major, "if you would thank me for a piece of information?"
"Something. Would you thank me if I told you?"
"I'd like to hear it very much. I don't believe you know anything bad of him."
"Nothing exactly bad, and yet something important--at least for you. I can tell you if you will make me a promise. I think you ought to know it, too, but I can only tell you if you make me a promise."
"That you will keep it dark that I told you. I must have your promise; then I have something of great interest to say."
"You quite frighten me," said the girl. "What can it be? Something about Gavon, and something, I see by your manner, not quite good. And I am to make you a promise."
"You can act in any way you like, but you are never to tell who told you. And if you give me your promise, I will take you a little bit into my confidence, and you and I can work together. You won't find it dull in Ladysmith when you and I have made our little plot to stick together and work together."
"But I don't at all know that I want to work with you, Major Strause."
"Oh, it isn't a love business--nothing of that sort."
"It simply means that you and I want to hold what we have got."
"To hold what we have got!" repeated the girl.
"Yes, that's about it. You and I want to hold our possessions tightly; and I think we can if we make a little league to work together."