, at latest?
What is there to wait for?"

They were sitting in the little school-room, or study, as it was called,
near the front door--the very room in which Elizabeth had talked with
Brian on the night of his arrival at Strathleckie. The remembrance of
that conversation prompted her reply.

"Oh, no," she said, in a tone of almost agonised entreaty. "Percival,
have a little mercy. Not yet--not yet."

His face hardened: his keen eyes fixed themselves relentlessly upon her
white face. He was sitting upon the sofa: she standing by the fireplace
with her hands clasped tightly before her. For a minute he looked at her
thus, and then he spoke.

"You said just now that it was all the same to you. May I ask what you
mean?"

"There is no need to ask me," she said, resolutely, although, her pale
lips quivered. "You know what I mean. I will marry you before Christmas,
if you like; but not with such--such indecent haste as you propose. Not
this month, nor next."

"In December then?"

"Yes."

"You promise? Even if this man--this tutor--should come back?"

"I suppose I have given you a right to doubt me, Percival," she said.
"But I have never broken my word--never! From the first, I only promised
to try to love you; and, indeed, I tried."

"Oh, of course, I know that I am not a lovable individual," said
Percival, throwing himself back on the cushions with a savage scowl.

She looked up quickly: there was a bitter word upon her tongue, but she
refrained from uttering it. The struggle lasted for a moment only; then
she went over to him, and laid her hand softly upon his arm.

"Percival, are you always going to be so hard upon me?" she said. "I
know you do not easily forgive, and I have wronged you. Can I do more
than be sorry for my wrong-doing? I was wrong to object to your wishes.
I will marry you when you like: you shall decide everything for me now!"

His face had been gloomily averted, but he turned and looked at her as
she said the last few words, and took both her hands in his.

"I'm not quite such a brute as you think me, Elizabeth," he answered,
with some emotion in his voice. "I don't want to make you do what you
find painful."

"That is nonsense," she said, more decidedly than he had heard her speak
for many days. "The whole matter is very painful to both of us at
present. The only alleviation----"

"Well, what is the only alleviation? Why do you hesitate?"

She lifted her serious, clear eyes to his fa