"I don't care?" reproachfully.

"Not to any very great extent, I think; and of course it is not to be
wondered at. I'm not much, I allow, and perhaps there are others--"

"Now that is not at all a pretty speech," interrupts Dulce, sweetly; "so
you sha'n't finish it. Come here directly and give me a little kiss, and
don't be cross."

This decides everything. He comes here directly, and gives her a little
kiss, and isn't a bit cross.

"Why shouldn't you defy him and marry me?" says Roger, defiantly. "What
right has he to extort such a promise from you? Once we were man and
wife he would be powerless."

"But there is my word--I swore to him," returns she, earnestly. "I
cannot forget that. It was an understanding, a bargain."

"Well, but," begins he again; and then he sees something in the little,
pale, but determined face gazing pathetically up into his that deters
him from further argument. She will be quite true to her word once
pledged, he knows that; and though the knowledge is bitter to him, yet
he respects her so highly for it, that he vows to himself he will no
longer strive to tempt her from her sense of right. Lifting one of her
hands, he lays it upon his lips, as though to keep himself by her dear
touch from further speech.

"Never mind," he says, caressing her soft fingers tenderly. "We may be
able to baffle him yet, and even if not, we can be happy together in
spite of him. Can we not. I know _I_ can." Drawing her closer to him,
he whispers gently,

"A smile of thine shall make my bliss!"

After a while it occurs to them that they ought to return to the
drawing-room and the prosaic humdrumedness of everyday life. It is
wonderful how paltry everything has become in their sight, how it is
dwarfed and stunted by comparison with the great light of love that is
surrounding them. All outside this mist seems lost in a dull haze, seems
pale, expressionless.

Opening the library-door with slow, reluctant fingers, they almost
stumble against a figure crouching near the lintel. This figure starts
into nervous life at their appearance, and, muttering something
inaudible in a heavy indistinct tone, shuffles away from them, and is
lost to sight round a corner of the corridor.

"Surely that was old Gregory," says Dulce, after a surprised pause.

"So it was," returns Roger, "and, _as_ usual, as drunk as a fiddler."

"Isn't it dreadful of him?" says Dulce. "Do you know, Roger, his manner
is so stran