Even when a glaze comes over them (which is sometimes the
case), and he seems to wander away into a frightful sort of dream
in which he threatens most, he obliges me to know it, and to know
that he is sitting close at my side, more terrible to me than
ever.'
'What is this imagined threatening, pretty one? What is
threatened?'
'I don't know. I have never even dared to think or wonder what it
is.'
'And was this all, to-night?'
'This was all; except that to-night when he watched my lips so
closely as I was singing, besides feeling terrified I felt ashamed
and passionately hurt. It was as if he kissed me, and I couldn't
bear it, but cried out. You must never breathe this to any one.
Eddy is devoted to him. But you said to-night that you would not
be afraid of him, under any circumstances, and that gives me--who
am so much afraid of him--courage to tell only you. Hold me! Stay
with me! I am too frightened to be left by myself.'
The lustrous gipsy-face drooped over the clinging arms and bosom,
and the wild black hair fell down protectingly over the childish
form. There was a slumbering gleam of fire in the intense dark
eyes, though they were then softened with compassion and
admiration. Let whomsoever it most concerned look well to it!
CHAPTER VIII--DAGGERS DRAWN
The two young men, having seen the damsels, their charges, enter
the courtyard of the Nuns' House, and finding themselves coldly
stared at by the brazen door-plate, as if the battered old beau
with the glass in his eye were insolent, look at one another, look
along the perspective of the moonlit street, and slowly walk away
together.
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