I should be utterly miserable while you were running such a risk again, and for such a trifle." "It is no such terrible risk to me, and to please you is not quite a trifle.

Besides, I ought to deserve my prize better than I have yet done.

But you seem to have some especial spite against the unlucky vessel that brought me here; and that," I added, smiling, "seems hardly gracious in a bride of an hour." "No, no!" she murmured, evidently much distressed; "but the vessel that brought you here may take you away." "I will not pain you yet by saying that I hope it may.

At all events, it shall not do so till you are content that it should." She made no answer, and seemed for some time to hesitate, as if afraid or unwilling to say something which rose irrepressibly to her lips.

A few persuasive words, however, encouraged her, and she found her voice, though with a faltering accent, which greatly surprised me when I learned at last the purport of her request.
"I do not understand," she said, "your ideas or customs, but I know they are different from ours.