an or anybody else could get you away from me.'

'I must go home by the Tuesday boat,' she faltered. 'What would they
think if I did not come?'

'You could go home by that boat just the same. All the difference would
be that I should go with you. You could leave me on the quay, where I'd
have a smoke, while you went and saw your father and mother privately;
you could then tell them what you had done, and that I was waiting not
far off; that I was a school-master in a fairly good position, and a
young man you had known when you were at the Training College. Then I
would come boldly forward; and they would see that it could not be
altered, and so you wouldn't suffer a lifelong misery by being the wife
of a wretched old gaffer you don't like at all. Now, honestly; you do
like me best, don't you, Baptista?'

'Yes.'

'Then we will do as I say.'

She did not pronounce a clear affirmative. But that she consented to the
novel proposition at some moment or other of that walk was apparent by
what occurred a little later.

CHAPTER III

An enterprise of such pith required, indeed, less talking than
consideration. The first thing they did in carrying it out was to return
to the railway station, where Baptista took from her luggage a small
trunk of immediate necessaries which she would in any case have required
after missing the boat. That same afternoon they travelled up the line
to Trufal.

Charles Stow (as his name was), despite his disdainful indifference to
things, was very careful of appearances, and made the journey
independently of her though in the same train. He told her where she
could get board and lodgings in the city; and with merely a distant nod
to her of a provisional kind, went off to his own quarters, and to see
about the licence.

On Sunday she saw him in the morning across the nave of the
pro-cathedral. In the afternoon they walked together in the fields,
where he told her that the licence would be ready next day, and would be
available the day after, when the ceremony could be performed as early
after eight o'clock as they should choose.

His courtship, thus renewed after an interval of two years, was as
impetuous, violent even, as it was short. The next day came and passed,
and the final arrangements were made. Their agreement was to get the
ceremony over as soon as they possibly could the next morning, so as to
go on to Pen-zephyr at once, and reach that place in time for the boa