"
"Whose honour is in danger then?--Dear witch, forgive me, but don't you
see the implication?"
Damaris looked around at him with unfathomable eyes. Her lips parted, yet
she made no answer.
After a pause Carteret spoke again, and, to his own hearing, his voice
sounded hoarse as that of the tideless sea upon the beach yonder.
"Do you mean me to understand that the conflict between your father's
interests and those of this other person--this other man's--arise from
the fact that you love him?"
"Yes," Damaris calmly declared.
"Love him,"--having gone thus far Carteret refused to spare himself. He
turned the knife in the wound--"Love him to the point of marriage?"
There, the word was said. Almost unconsciously he walked onward without
giving time for her reply.--He moistened his lips, weren't they dry as a
cinder? He measured the height to which hope had borne him, to-night, by
the shock, the positive agony of his existing fall. At the young girl,
_svelte_ and graceful, beside him, he could not look; but kept his eyes
fixed on the mass of the wooded promontory, dark and solid against the
more luminous tones of water and of sky, some half-mile distant.
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