Fareham noted the slightness of the blush.
"I verily believe that handsome youth has found you adamant," he said,
after a thoughtful silence. "Yet you might easily choose a worse suitor.
Your sister has often the strangest whims about marriage-making; but in
this fancy I did not oppose her. It would be a very suitable alliance."
"I hope your lordship does not begin to think me a burden on your
household," faltered Angela, wounded by his cold-blooded air in disposing
of her. "When you and my sister are tired of me I can go back to my
convent."
"What! Return to those imprisoning walls; immure your sweet youth in a
cloister? Not for the Indies. I would not suffer such a sacrifice. Tired of
you! I--so deeply bound! I who owe you my life! I who looked up out of a
burning hell of pain and madness and saw an angel standing by my bed! Tired
of you! Indeed you know me better than to think so badly of me were it but
in one flash of thought. You can need no protestations from me. Only, as
a young and beautiful woman, living in an age that is full of peril for
women, I should like to see you married to a good and true man--such as
Denzil Warner."
"I am sorry to disappoint you," Angela answered coldly; "but Papillon and
I have agreed that I am always to be her spinster aunt, and am to keep her
house when she is married, and wear a linsey gown and a bunch of keys at my
girdle, like Mrs.
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