"
The tint on Maud's cheek deepened as Robert Willoughby laid so heavy an
emphasis on "_your_ safety;" but she could not smile on an act
that risked so much more than was prudent.
"This is well enough as to motive," she said, after a pause; "but
frightfully ill-judged, I should think, as to the risks. You do not
remember the importance our dear father is to us all--to my mother--to
Beulah--even to me, Bob."
"Even to _you_, Maud!--And why not as much to _you_ as to any
of us?"
Maud could speak to Beulah of her want of natural affinity to the
family; but, it far exceeded her self-command to make a direct allusion
to it to Robert Willoughby. Still, it was now rarely absent from her
mind; the love she bore the captain and his wife, and Beulah, and
little Evert, coming to her heart through a more insidious and possibly
tenderer tie, than that of purely filial or sisterly affection. It was,
indeed, this every-day regard, strangely deepened and enlivened by that
collateral feeling we so freely bestow on them who are bound by natural
ties to those who have the strongest holds on our hearts, and which
causes us to see with their eyes, and to feel with their affections.
Accordingly, no reply was made to the question; or, rather, it was
answered by putting another.
"Did you see anything, after all, to compensate for so much risk?"
asked Maud, but not until a pause had betrayed her embarrassment.
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