l give me a chance of clearing
myself with you, my girl, and I'll go home in peace and wait."

What girl could resist the man she loved so truly, when he pleaded so
well? With his arm about her waist, and his handsome face bent over
her, lit up with what she took to be love. Not she, at all events. She
drew the handsome face down towards her, and as she kissed him
fervently, said:

"I will never believe what they say of you, love. I should die if I
lost you. I will stay by you through evil report and good report. What
is all the world to me without you?"

And she felt what she said, and meant it. What though the words in
which she spoke were borrowed from the trashy novels she was always
reading--they were true enough for all that. George saw that they were
true, and saw also that now was the time to speak about what he had
been pondering over all day.

"And suppose, my own love," he said; "that your father should stay in
his present mind, and not come round?"

"Well!" she said.

"What are we to do?" he asked; "are we to be always content with
meeting here and there, when we dare? Is there nothing further?"

"What do you mean?" she said in a whisper. "What shall we do?"

"Can't you answer that?" he said softly. "Try."

"No, I can't answer. You tell me what."

"Fly!" he said in her ear. "Fly, and get married, that's what I mean."

"Oh! that's what you mean," she replied. "Oh, George, I should not have
courage for that."

"I think you will, my darling, when the time comes. Go home and think
about it."

He kissed her once more, and then she ran away homeward through the
dark. But she did not run far before she began to walk slower and think.

"Fly with him," she thought. Run away and get married. What a
delightfully wild idea. Not to be entertained for a moment, of course,
but still what a pleasant notion. She meant to marry George in the end;
why not that way as well as any other? She thought about it again and
again, and the idea grew more familiar. At all events, if her father
should continue obstinate, here was a way out of the difficulty. He
would be angry at first, but when he found he could not help himself he
would come round, and then they would all be happy. She would shut her
ears to anything they said against George. She could not believe it.
She would not. He should be her husband, come what might. She would
dissemble, and keep her father's suspicions quiet. More, she would
speak lightly of G