Clearly he must get back to their former
relation. Rejoice in her beauty, in her sweet faith and dependence, love
her--yes--he admitted the word,--but for God's sake keep the physical
side out of the business. Damaris' easily-aroused loyalty, meanwhile,
caught alight.
"Oh, but we've just been Henrietta's guests," she said, with a pretty
mingling of appeal and rebuke--"and it seems hardly kind, does it, to
find faults in her. She has been beautifully good to me all this time,
ending up with this dance which she gave on purpose to please me."
"And herself also," Carteret returned.
--Yes decidedly he felt better, steadier, to the point of now trusting
himself to look at his companion, notwithstanding the strange influences
abroad in the magical moonlight, with his accustomed smiling,
half-amused indulgence. The unremitting trample of the waves, there on
the right, made for level-headedness actually if a little
mercilessly--so he thought.
"I don't wish to be guilty of taking Mrs. Frayling's name in vain a
second time," he went on--"you've pulled me up, and quite rightly, for
doing so once already--but depend upon it, she enjoyed her ball every
morsel as much as you did.
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