The Heart

I felt myself growing pale at that, and I could not speak because of

a curious stiffness of my lips, and I heard my heart beat like a

clock in the deserted house. Sir Humphrey was looking at me with an

anxiety which was sharpening into suspicion. "Harry," he said, "you

do not think--"

"'Tis sheer folly, lad," I burst out then, "and let us have no more

of it. 'Tis but the idle prating of a lovesick girl, who should have

a lover, ere she try to steal a nest in the heart of one of her own

sex. 'Tis folly, Sir Humphrey Hyde."

"So said I to Cicely," Sir Humphrey cried, eagerly, too interested

in his own cause to heed my slighting words for his sister. "'Tis

the rankest folly, I told her. Here is Harry Wingfield, old enough

almost to be Mary's father, and beside, beside--oh, confound it,

Harry," the generous lad burst out. "I would not like you for a

rival, for you are a good half foot taller than I, and you have that

about you which would make a woman run to you and think herself safe

were all the Indians in Virginia up, and you are a dark man, and I

have heard say they like that, but, but--oh, I say, Harry, 'tis

a damned shame that you are here as you are, and not as a gentleman

and a cavalier with the rest of us, for all the evidence to the

contrary and all the government to the contrary, 'tis, 'tis the way

you should be, and not a word of that charge do I believe. May the

fiends take me if I do, Harry!" So saying, the lad looked at me, and

verily the tears were in his blue eyes, and out he thrust his honest

hand for me to grasp, which I did with more of comfort than I had

had for many a day, though it was the hand of a rival, and the next

minute forth he burst again: "Say, Harry, if it be true that thou

art out of the running, and I believe it must be so, for how

could?--say, Harry, think you there is any chance for me?"

"I know of no reason why there should not be, Sir Humphrey," I said.

"Only, only--that she is what she is, and I but myself. Oh,

Harry, was there ever one like that girl? All the spirit of daring

of a man she has, and yet is she full of all the sweet ways of a

maid. Faith, she would draw sword one minute and tie a ribbon the

next. She would have followed Bacon to the death, and sat up all

night to broider herself a kerchief. Comrade and sweetheart both she

is, and was there ever one like her for beauty? Harry, Harry, saw

you ever such a beauty as Mary Cavendish?"