ng more about it. And whatever happens, I must ask you to keep my
name out of the affair altogether. You'll do that, won't you? Let us go
back now, if you don't mind."

They walked back in silence. He looked at her once or twice, but her
face was stern and rigid, and she would not give him even one glance.
At the door she gave him her hand, with a matter-of-fact "I will say
good-night now," and disappeared into her room, where she threw herself
on the bed and sobbed bitterly; for the truth was that she was very,
very fond of him. She, too, had built her little castles in the air as
to what she would say and do when he put the momentous question.
Girls do foresee these things, somehow; although they do pretend to be
astonished when the time arrives.

She had pictured him saying all sorts of endearing things, and making
all sorts of loving protestations; and now it had come to this--she had
been asked as if it were merely a matter of avoiding scandal. It was too
great a shock. She lay silently crying, while Hugh, his castles in the
air having crumbled around him, was trying in a dazed way to frame a
letter to Mr. Grant.

His thoughts were anything but pleasant. What a fool he had been,
talking to her like that! Making it look as if he had only proposed to
her because he ought to protect her good name! Why hadn't he spoken to
her before--in the tree, on the ride home, any other time? Why hadn't he
spoken differently? To him the refusal seemed the end of all things.
He thought of asking Mr. Grant to give him the management of the most
out-back place he had, so that he could go away and bury himself. He
even thought of resigning his position altogether and going to the
goldfields. Red Mick and his delinquencies seemed but small matters now;
and, after what had passed, he must, of course, see that Miss Grant was
not dragged into the business. So he sat down and began to write.

The letter took a good deal of thinking over. It had got about the
station that Red Mick had at last been caught in flagrante delicto;
the house-cook had told the cook at the men's hut, and he had told the
mailman, who stopped on the road to tell the teamsters ploughing along
with their huge waggons to Kiley's Crossing; they told the publican at
Kiley's, and he told everybody he saw. The children made a sort of play
out of it, the eldest boy personating Red Mick, while two of the younger
ones hid in a fallen tree, and were routed out by Thomas Carly