She slipped her arms around his neck, and shyly, childishly, she kissed the lips that had devoured her own so mercilessly the night before.
"Yes--yes, I will always give you more!" she said tremulously.
He took her face between his hands and kissed her in return, not violently, but with confidence. "That seals you for my very own," he said. "You will never run away from me again?"
But she would not promise that. The memory of the previous night still scorched her intolerably whenever her thoughts turned that way.
"I shan't want to run away if--if you stay as you are now," she told him confusedly.
He laughed in his easy way. "Oh, Daphne, I shall have a lot to teach you when we are married. How soon do you think you can be ready?"
She started in his hold at the question, and then quickly gave herself fully back to him again. "I don't know a bit. You'll have to ask mother. P'raps--she may not allow it at all."
"Ho! Won't she?" said Sir Eustace. "I think I know better. What about that trip on the yacht in July? Can you be ready in time for that?"
"Oh, I expect I could be ready sooner than that," said Dinah naïvely.
"You could?" He smiled upon her. "Well, next week then! What do you say to next week?"
But she shrank again at that. "Oh no! Not possibly! Not possibly! You--you're laughing!" She looked at him accusingly.
He caught her to him. "You baby! You innocent! Yes, I'm going to kiss you. Where will you have it? Just anywhere?"
He held her and kissed her, still laughing, yet with a heat that made her flinch involuntarily; kissed the pointed chin and quivering lips, the swift-shut eyes and soft cheeks, the little, trembling dimple that came and went.
"Yes, you are mine--all mine," he said. "Remember, I have a right to you now that no one else has. Not all the mammas in the world could come between us now."
She laughed, half-exultantly, half-dubiously, peeping at him through her lowered lashes. "I wonder if you'll still say that when--when you've seen--my mother," she murmured.
He kissed her again, kissed anew the dimples that showed and vanished so alluringly. "You will see presently, my Daphne," he said. "But I'm going to have you, you know. That's quite understood, isn't it?"
"Yes," whispered Dinah, with docility.