"You are fastidious?" he asked.
"Of course I am!" Priscilla's words came rather breathlessly. "Don't you
think me so?"
Again he was silent for seconds. Then, in a baffling drawl, his answer
came:
"If you will allow me to say so, I think you are just the sweetest woman
I ever met."
Priscilla met his eyes for a single instant, and looked away. She was
burning and throbbing from head to foot. She could find naught to say in
answer; no word wherewith to turn his deliberate sentence into a jest.
Perhaps in her secret heart she did not desire to do so, for a voice
within her, a voice long stifled, cried out that she had met her mate.
And, since surrender was inevitable, why should she seek to delay it?
But Carfax said no more. Possibly he thought he had said too much. At
least, after a long, quiet pause, he looked away from her; and the spell
that bound her passed.
V
THE OPENING GATES
That evening Priscilla found a letter from her stepmother awaiting
her--a briefly worded, urgent summons.
"Your cousin has not arrived, after all," it said. "Your father and I
are greatly disappointed. Would it not be as well for you to return to
town? You can scarcely, I fear, afford to waste your time in this
fashion. Young Lord Harfield was asking for you most solicitously only
yesterday. Such a charming man, I have always thought!"
"That--chicken!" said Priscilla, and tossed her letter aside.
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