After a silence, broken only by our horses treading the moist earth:  “I have been starving for this companionship....  I was parched!...  Cousin, have you let me drink too deeply?  Have you been too kind?  Why am I in this new terror lest you—­lest you tire of me and my silly speech?  Oh, I know my thoughts have been too long pent!  I could talk to you forever!  I could ride with you till I died!  I am like a caged thing loosed, I tell you—­for I may tell you, may I not, cousin?”

“Tell me all you think, Dorothy.”

“I could tell you all—­everything!  I never had a thought that I do not desire you to know, ... save one....  And that I do desire to tell you ... but cannot....  Cousin, why did you name your mare Isene?”

“An Indian girl in Florida bore that name; the Seminoles called her Issena.”

“And so you named your mare from her?”

“Yes.”

“Was she your friend—­that you named your mare from her?”

“She lived a century ago—­a princess.  She wedded with a Huguenot.”

“Oh,” said Dorothy, “I thought she was perhaps your sweetheart.”

“I have none.”

“You never had one?”

“No.”

“Why?”

I turned in my saddle.

“Why have you never had a gallant?”

“Oh, that is not the same.  Men fall in love—­or protest as much.  And at wine they boast of their good fortunes, swearing each that his mistress is the fairest, and bragging till I yawn to listen....  And yet you say you never had a sweetheart?”

“Neither titled nor untitled, cousin.  And, if I had, at home we never speak of it, deeming it a breach of honor.”

“Why?”

“For shame, I suppose.”

“Is it shameless to speak as I do?” she asked.

“Not to me, Dorothy.  I wish you might be spared all that unlicensed gossip that you hear at table—­not that it could harm such innocence as yours!  For, on my honor, I never knew a woman such as you, nor a maid so nobly fashioned!”

I stopped, meeting her wide eyes.

“Say it,” she murmured.  “It is happiness to hear you.”

“Then hear me,” I said, slowly.  “Loyalty, devotion, tenderness, all are your due; not alone for the fair body that holds your soul imprisoned, but for the pure tenant that dwells in it so sweetly behind the blue windows of your eyes!  Dorothy!  Dorothy!  Have I said too much?  Yet I beg that you remember it, lest you forget me when I have gone from you....  And say to Sir George that I said it....  Tell him after you are wedded, and say that all men envy him, yet wish him well.  For the day he weds he weds the noblest woman in all the confines of this earth!”

Dazed, she stared at me through the fading light; and I saw her eyes all wet in the shadow of her tangled hair and the pulse beating in her throat.

“You are so good—­so pitiful,” she said; “and I cannot even find the words to tell you of those deep thoughts you stir in me—­to tell you how sweetly you use me—­”