Without your direct request no
word of what you choose to tell me will ever pass my lips."
"Ah! I'm very sure of that,"--Her smile, her voice bore transparent
testimony to a faith which went, somewhat giddily, not only to her
hearer's heart but to his head. "It isn't a question of your repeating
anything; but of your thinking differently of some one you care for very
much--and who is almost as dependent on you, Colonel Sahib, as I am
myself. At least I fear you might.--Oh! I am so perplexed, I'm in such
a maze," she said. "I've nothing to go on in all this, and I turn it
over and over in my mind to no purpose till my head aches. You see I
can't make out whether this--the thing which began it all and happened
oh! long ago--is extraordinary--one which you--and most people like
you--in your position, I mean--would consider very wrong and
disgraceful; or whether it often happens and is just accepted, taken for
granted, only not talked about."
Carteret felt cold all down his spine. For what, in God's name, could
this supremely dear and--as he watched her grave and sweetly troubled
countenance--supremely lovely child, be driving at?
"And I care so dreadfully much," she went on.
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