that he
was unshaved, and that he looked unusually old; but as she had always
thought of him as an old man the change in his appearance did not move
her. She told him she had been to see Miss Hatchard, and with what
object. She saw that he was astonished; but he made no comment.

"I told her the housework was too hard for me, and I wanted to earn the
money to pay for a hired girl. But I ain't going to pay for her: you've
got to. I want to have some money of my own."

Mr. Royall's bushy black eyebrows were drawn together in a frown, and he
sat drumming with ink-stained nails on the edge of his desk.

"What do you want to earn money for?" he asked.

"So's to get away when I want to."

"Why do you want to get away?"

Her contempt flashed out. "Do you suppose anybody'd stay at North Dormer
if they could help it? You wouldn't, folks say!"

With lowered head he asked: "Where'd you go to?"

"Anywhere where I can earn my living. I'll try here first, and if I
can't do it here I'll go somewhere else. I'll go up the Mountain if I
have to." She paused on this threat, and saw that it had taken effect.
"I want you should get Miss Hatchard and the selectmen to take me at the
library: and I want a woman here in the house with me," she repeated.

Mr. Royall had grown exceedingly pale. When she ended he stood up
ponderously, leaning against the desk; and for a second or two they
looked at each other.

"See here," he said at length as though utterance were difficult,
"there's something I've been wanting to say to you; I'd ought to have
said it before. I want you to marry me."

The girl still stared at him without moving. "I want you to marry me,"
he repeated, clearing his throat. "The minister'll be up here next
Sunday and we can fix it up then. Or I'll drive you down to Hepburn to
the Justice, and get it done there. I'll do whatever you say." His
eyes fell under the merciless stare she continued to fix on him, and
he shifted his weight uneasily from one foot to the other. As he
stood there before her, unwieldy, shabby, disordered, the purple veins
distorting the hands he pressed against the desk, and his long orator's
jaw trembling with the effort of his avowal, he seemed like a hideous
parody of the fatherly old man she had always known.

"Marry you? Me?" she burst out with a scornful laugh. "Was that what you
came to ask me the other night? What's come over you, I wonder? How long
is it since you've looked at yourself in