At this reflection she shuddered again.
"Ugh!" she whispered. "He'd have tried to take liberties, any other man
would. He'd have presumed on the accident--he'd have been--oh,
everything that _that_ man was not, and could never be!"
Now her thoughts wandered to the brief talk they two had had there in
the old sugar-house. Every word of it seemed graven on her memory.
Disconnected bits of what he had told her, seemed to float before her
mental vision--: "I? Oh, I'm just an out-of-work--don't ask me who I am;
and I won't ask who _you_ are. We're of different worlds, I guess--don't
question me; I'd rather you wouldn't. Am I happy? Yes, in a way, or
shall be, when I've done what I mean to do!"
Such were some of his phrases that kept coming back to her, as she sat
there in that luxurious and beautiful room, her book lying unread in her
lap, the scent of flowers everywhere, and, merely for her taking, all
the world's treasures hers to command. Strange man, indeed, and stranger
speech, to her! Never had she been thus spoken to.
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