"You
do not disturb me, but my father is--is, well a trifle cross
sometimes, and if he should speak up a little harsh now and then, you
must not mind. I am sorry you are so ill."
What is there in some women's look, some women's touch that more than
all beauty goes to the heart and subdues it. As she stood there
before me in her dark worsted dress and coarse shawl, with her locks
simply braided and her whole person undignified by art and ungraced by
ornament, she seemed just by the power of her expression and the
witchery of her manner, the loveliest woman I had ever beheld.
"You are veree kind, veree good," I murmured, half ashamed of my
disguise, though it was assumed for the purpose of rescuing her.
"Your sympathy goes to my heart." Then as a deep growl of impatience
rose from the room at my side, I motioned her to go and not irritate
the man who seemed to have such control over her.
"In a minute," answered she, "first tell me what you are making."
So I told her and in the course of telling, let drop such other facts
about my fancied life as I wished to have known to her and through
her to her father. She looked sweetly interested and more than once
turned upon me that dark eye, of which I had heard so much, full of
tears that were as much for me, scamp that I was, as for her own
secret trouble.
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