e, others wouldn't
understand, you remember what your father said about the Makimmon breed?
They would repeat that I had nothing, or even that I was marrying you for
old Pompey's money. You know better than that, you know he wouldn't give
us a penny."

"It wouldn't matter now what any one said," she returned serenely.

"But it would be so much easier--we could slip off quietly somewhere, and
come back married, all the fuss avoided, all the say so's and say no's
shut up right at the beginning."

"When do you want to be--be married?"

"Right away! now! to-day!"

"Oh ... oh, Gordon, but we couldn't! I haven't even a white dress here. I
might go into Greenstream, be ready to-morrow--"

"No, no, no, I'm afraid it must be now or never; something would take you
from me. I knew it, I was afraid of it, from the first ... I'll shoot
myself."

She started toward him in an excess of tender pity. "Do you care as much
as that?" She laid her palms upon his shoulders, lifting her face to his:
"Then we will do what you say, we will go, yes, we will go immediately.
You can hitch up the buggy, while I get a little thing or two. I have my
beads, and the bracelets that were mother's ... I wish my white organdie
was here. You mustn't think I'm silly! You see--marriage, for a girl ... I
thought it would all be so different. But, Gordon dear, we won't let you
be unhappy."

He wished silently to God that she would get the stuff in the house, that
they would get started. At any minute now word would come of the old man's
death, there would be delay, Lettice would learn that he had lied again
and again to her. With a gesture of impatience he dislodged her hands from
his shoulders. "Where's Sim?" he demanded.

"In the long field. I'll show you the stable; it won't take me a minute to
get ready."

He hitched, in an incredibly short space of time, a tall, ungainly roan
horse into the buggy; his practised hands connected the straps, settled
the headstall, the collar, as if by magic. He stood in a fever of
uneasiness at the harnessed head. Lettice was longer than she had
indicated.

When, at last, she appeared, she carried a neatly pinned paper bundle, and
a fragrant mass of hastily pulled roses. Bright blue glass beads hung over
the soft contours of her virginal breasts, the bracelets that had been
her mother's--enamelled in black on old, reddish gold--encircled her
smooth wrists.

He would have hurried her at once into the buggy, but