can have a million cats, if you like, but all I want is you. Just
you, sweetheart, to love me, with all the love you can give me. Will
you come?"

"Oh," cried Araminta, "if Aunt Hitty would only let me, but she never
would!"

"We won't ask her," returned Ralph. "We'll go away to-night, and be
married."

At the word, Araminta started out of her chair. Her face was white and
her eyes wide with fear. "I couldn't," she said, with difficulty.
"You shouldn't ask me to do what you know is wrong. Just because my
mother was married, because she was wicked--you must not think that I
would be wicked, too."

Hot words were struggling for utterance, but Ralph choked them back.
The fog was thick before him and he saw Araminta as through a heavy
veil. "Undine," he said, moistening his parched lips, "some day you
will find your soul. And when you do, come to me. I shall be waiting."

He went out of the room unsteadily, and closed the door. He stood at
the head of the stairs for a long time before he went down. Apparently
there was no one in the house. He went into the parlour and sat down,
wiping the cold sweat from his forehead, and trying to regain his
self-control.

He saw, clearly, that Araminta was not in the least to blame; that
almost ever since her birth, she had been under the thumb of a
domineering woman who persistently inculcated her own warped ideas.
Since her earliest childhood, Araminta had been taught that marriage
was wrong--that her own mother was wicked, because she had been
married. And of the love between man and woman, the child knew
absolutely nothing.

"Good God!" muttered Ralph. "My little girl, oh, my little girl!"
Man-like, he loved her more than ever because she had denied him;
man-like, he wanted her now as he had never wanted her before. Through
the weeks that he had seen her every day, he had grown to feel his need
of her, to hunger for the sweetness of her absolute dependence upon
him. Yet, until now, he had not guessed how deeply he cared, nor
guessed that such caring was possible.

He sat there for the better part of an hour, slowly regaining command
of himself. Miss Evelina came through the hall and paused just outside
the door, feeling intuitively that some one was in the house. She drew
down her veil and went in.

"I thought you had gone," she said. "Did you wish to see me?"

"No," returned Ralph, wearily; "not especially."

She sat down opposite him silently. All