"I--I have nothing to tell," I said, choking down a sob. "I am ashamed
for you to see me like this, only--I am feeling so very miserable."
"Dear child!" he said. "Well, you are not to be--I won't have it. Has some
one been unkind to you? Tell me, tell me." His voice was trembling with
distress.
"It's--it's nothing," I mumbled.
I dared not look at him, I knew his eyebrows would be up in that way that
attracts me so dreadfully.
"Listen," he whispered almost, and bent over me. "I want you to be friends
with me so that I can help you. I want you to go back to the time we
packed your books together. God knows what has come between us since--it
is not of my doing. But I want to take care of you, dear little girl,
to-day. It--oh, it hurts me so to see you crying here!"
"I--would like to be friends," I said. "I never wanted to be anything
else, but I could not help it, and I can't now."
"Won't you tell me the reason?" he pleaded. "You have made me so
dreadfully unhappy about it. I thought all sorts of things. You know I am
a jealous beast."
There can't in the world be another voice as engaging as Lord Robert's,
and he has a trick of pronouncing words that is too attractive; and the
way his mouth goes when he is speaking, showing his perfectly chiselled
lips under the little mustache! There is no use pretending.
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