I repeated my question.

She looked away confusedly; her eye lighted on a corner of her father's red-brick house, peeping through a gap in the plantation already mentioned; and her blushing cheeks lost their color instantly.

I felt her hands grow cold; she drew them resolutely out of mine, and rose with the tears in her eyes.

Had I offended her?
"No," she said when I asked her the question, and turned to me again, and held out her hand with such frank, fearless kindness, that I almost fell on my knees to thank her for it.
Might I hope ever to hear her say "Yes" to the question that I had asked on the riverbank?
She sighed bitterly, and turned again toward the red-brick house.
Was there any family reason against her saying "Yes"?
Anything that I must not inquire into?
Any opposition to be dreaded from her father?
The moment I mentioned her father, she shrank away from me and burst into a violent fit of crying.
"Don't speak of it again!" she said in a broken voice.

"I mustn't--you mustn't--ah, don't, don't say a word more about it! I'm not distressed with you--it is not your fault.