sudden and delightful smile broke the gloom of his face. “I know what is not expected, and I will be very good,” he said. “You can trust me.”
“You have a way of making it hard to refuse you what you want,” she answered.
“That is as it should be,” he said eagerly, bending closer to her; “please, ah please, signorina, do not, in this case, what you find it hard to do. You will find me so grateful and so good and restrained that a puritan parson born in a cold climate could not be more so.”
Anne blushed and laughed. This childlike eagerness combined with a very masculine determination, was unknown in the girl’s experience, and the childlikeness held a powerful charm for her because it was combined with such a vital manhood. She felt that to see anything in his company, whether it was a Grecian vase or St. Peter’s itself, would be a delight to her; but she made an effort and continued to deny him.
“It is not that I do not trust you,” she said, “and it is not that I do not want to go, but I am not willing that the kind of thing should be said of me that would be said if I went with you alone as you ask me to do.”
She rose hastily and advanced to meet her aunt.
53
