lice, almost inaudibly though.

"Alice, my love," said Sam, "have you thought of one thing? Have you
thought that I must make a start in life for myself?"

No, she hadn't thought of that. Didn't see why Baroona wasn't good
enough for him.

"My dear!" he said. "Baroona is a fine property, but it is not mine. I
want money for a set purpose. For a glorious purpose, my love! I will
not tell you yet, not for years perhaps, what that purpose is. But I
want fifty thousand pounds of my own. And fifty thousand pounds I will
have."

Good gracious! What an avaricious creature. Such a quantity of money.
And so she wasn't to hear what he was going to do with it, for ever so
many years. Wouldn't he tell her now? She would so like to know. Would
nothing induce him?

Yes, there was something. Nay, what harm! Only an honest lover's kiss,
among the ripening grapes. In the dark, you say. My dear madam, you
would not have them kiss one another in broad day, with the cook
watching them out of the kitchen window?

"Alice," he said, "I have had one object before me from my boyhood, and
since you told me that I was to be your husband, that object has grown
from a vague intention to a fixed purpose. Alice, I want to buy back
the acres of my forefathers; I wish, I intend, that another Buckley
shall be the master of Clere, and that you shall be his wife."

"Sam, my love!" she said, turning on him suddenly. "What a magnificent
idea. Is it possible?"

"Easy," said Sam. "My father could do it, but will not. He and my
mother have severed every tie with the old country, and it would be at
their time of life only painful to go back to the old scenes and
interests. But with me it is different. Think of you and I taking the
place we are entitled to by birth and education, in the splendid
society of that noble island. Don't let me hear all that balderdash
about the founding of new empires. Empires take too long in growing for
me. What honours, what society, has this little colony to give,
compared to those open to a fourth-rate gentleman in England? I want to
be a real Englishman, not half a one. I want to throw in my lot heart
and hand with the greatest nation in the world. I don't want to be
young Sam Buckley of Baroona. I want to be the Buckley of Clere. Is not
that a noble ambition?"

"My whole soul goes with you, Sam," said Alice. "My whole heart and
soul. Let us consult, and see how this is to be done."

"This is the way the thing stand