another, and it saw them easily enough through the greater part of the
rest of their adventure. Downstairs again, however, with the limit of
his stay in sight, the sign of his smarting, when all was said,
reappeared for her--breaking out moreover, with an effect of
strangeness, in another quite possibly sincere allusion to her state of
health. He might for that matter have been seeing what he could do in
the way of making it a grievance that she should snub him for a
charity, on his own part, exquisitely roused. "It's true, you know, all
the same, and I don't care a straw for your trying to freeze one up."
He seemed to show her, poor man, bravely, how little he cared.
"Everybody knows affection often makes things out when indifference
doesn't notice. And that's why I know that _I_ notice."

"Are you sure you've got it right?" the girl smiled. "I thought rather
that affection was supposed to be blind."

"Blind to faults, not to beauties," Lord Mark promptly returned.

"And are my extremely private worries, my entirely domestic
complications, which I'm ashamed to have given you a glimpse of--are
they beauties?"

"Yes, for those who care for you--as every one does. Everything about
you is a beauty. Besides which I don't believe," he declared, "in the
seriousness of what you tell me. It's too absurd you should have _any_
trouble about which something can't be done. If you can't get the right
thing, who can, in all the world, I should like to know? You're the
first young woman of your time. I mean what I say." He looked, to do
him justice, quite as if he did; not ardent, but clear--simply so
competent, in such a position, to compare, that his quiet assertion had
the force not so much perhaps of a tribute as of a warrant. "We're all
in love with you. I'll put it that way, dropping any claim of my own,
if you can bear it better. I speak as one of the lot. You weren't born
simply to torment us--you were born to make us happy. Therefore you
must listen to us."

She shook her head with her slowness, but this time with all her
mildness. "No, I mustn't listen to you--that's just what I mustn't do.
The reason is, please, that it simply kills me. I must be as attached
to you as you will, since you give that lovely account of yourselves. I
give you in return the fullest possible belief of what it would be--"
And she pulled up a little. "I give and give and give--there you are;
stick to me as close as you like and see if I don't.