me in his own
name--the name that he has kept concealed from every living creature but
myself and Mr. Brock--it is his interest that not a soul who knows him
should be present at the ceremony; his friend Armadale least of all.
He has been a week in London already. When another week has passed, he
proposes to get the License, and to be married in the church belonging
to the parish in which the hotel is situated. These are the only
necessary formalities. I had but to say 'Yes' (he told me), and to feel
no further anxiety about the future. I said 'Yes' with such a devouring
anxiety about the future that I was afraid he would see it. What minutes
the next few minutes were, when he whispered delicious words to me,
while I hid my face on his breast!

"I recovered myself first, and led him back to the subject of Armadale,
having my own reasons for wanting to know what they said to each other
after I had left them yesterday.

"The manner in which Midwinter replied showed me that he was speaking
under the restraint of respecting a confidence placed in him by his
friend. Long before he had done, I detected what the confidence was.
Armadale had been consulting him (exactly as I anticipated) on the
subject of the elopement. Although he appears to have remonstrated
against taking the girl secretly away from her home, Midwinter seems
to have felt some delicacy about speaking strongly, remembering (widely
different as the circumstances are) that he was contemplating a private
marriage himself. I gathered, at any rate, that he had produced very
little effect by what he had said; and that Armadale had already carried
out his absurd intention of consulting the head-clerk in the office of
his London lawyers.

"Having got as far as this, Midwinter put the question which I felt must
come sooner or later. He asked if I objected to our engagement being
mentioned, in the strictest secrecy, to his friend.

"'I will answer,' he said, 'for Allan's respecting any confidence that
I place in him. And I will undertake, when the time comes, so to use my
influence over him as to prevent his being present at the marriage, and
discovering (what he must never know) that my name is the same as his
own. It would help me,' he went on, 'to speak more strongly about the
object that has brought him to London, if I can requite the frankness
with which he has spoken of his private affairs to me by the same
frankness on my side.'

"I had no choice but to giv