you--that would not harm a hair of your head for a million pounds; I
have disgraced the hospitality of your father's house. I may have ruined
myself in your eyes, and to-morrow I'll writhe for it, but now--but
now--I have but one plea: I love you! I'll say it, though you struck me
dumb for ever."

She recovered a little, looked curiously at him, and "Is it not
something of a liberty, even that?" she asked. "You bring the manners of
the Inn to my father's house." The recollection of her helplessness in
his grasp came to her again, and stained her face as it had been with
wine.

He turned his hat in his hand, eyeing her dubiously but more calmly than
before.

"There you have me," he said, with a large and helpless gesture, "I am
not worth two of your most trivial words. I am a common rude soldier
that has not, as it were, seen you till a moment ago, and when I was at
your--at your lips, I should have been at your shoes."

She laughed disdainfully a little.

"Don't do that," said he, "you make me mad." Again the tumult of his
passion swept him down; he put a foot forward as if to approach her, but
stopped short as by an immense inward effort. "Nan, Nan, Nan," he cried
so loudly that a more watchful father would have heard it outside. "Nan,
Nan, Nan, I must say it if I die for it: I love you! I never felt--I
do not know--I cannot tell what ails me, but you are mine!" Then all at
once again his mood and accent changed. "Mine! What can I give? What can
I offer? Here's a poor ensign, and never a war with chances in it!"

He strode up and down the room, throwing his shadow, a feverish phantom,
on the blind, and Nan looked at him as if he had been a man in a play.
Here was her first lover with a vengeance! They might be all like that;
this madness, perhaps, was the common folly. She remembered that to him
she owed her life, and she was overtaken by pity.

"Let us say no more about it," she said calmly. "You alarmed me very
much, and I hope you will never do the like again. Let me think I myself
was willing"--he started--"that it was some--some playful way of paying
off the score I owe you."

"What score?" said he, astonished. "You saved my life," she answered,
all resentment gone. "Did I?" said he. "It would be the last plea I
would offer here and now. That was a boy's work, or luck as it might be;
this is a man before you. I am not wanting gratitude, but something far
more ill to win. Look at me," he went on; "I am Hig