"
"Hurts you?" she repeated, in astonishment.
"You can't think me half such a fool, Lizzie, as I think myself,"
pursued Kirke, bitterly. "A man at my age ought to know better. I didn't
set eyes on her for as much as a minute altogether; and there I have
been hanging about the place till after nightfall on the chance of
seeing her again--skulking, I should have called it, if I had found one
of my men doing what I have been doing myself. I believe I'm bewitched.
She's a mere girl, Lizzie--I doubt if she's out of her teens--I'm old
enough to be her father. It's all one; she stops in my mind in spite of
me. I've had her face looking at me, through the pitch darkness, every
step of the way to this house; and it's looking at me now--as plain as I
see yours, and plainer."
He rose impatiently, and began to walk backward and forward in the room.
His sister looked after him, with surprise as well as sympathy expressed
in her face. From his boyhood upward she had always been accustomed to
see him master of himself. Years since, in the failing fortunes of the
family, he had been their example and their support. She had heard of
him in the desperate emergencies of a life at sea, when hundreds of his
fellow-creatures had looked to his steady self-possession for rescue
from close-threatening death--and had not looked in vain.
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