r, I
ought to be ready to marry--that it is not quite honourable to withdraw."

Charles Verity moved slightly, yet held her close. She felt the rise and
fall of his ribs as he breathed slow and deep.

"Do you want to marry?" he at last asked her.

"No," she said, simply. "I'd much rather not, if I can keep out of it
without acting unfairly by anyone--if you don't agree with Henrietta, and
don't think I need. You don't want me to marry do you?"

"God in heaven, no," Charles Verity answered. He put her from him, rose
and moved about the room.

"To me, the thought of giving you in marriage to any man is little short
of abhorrent," he said hoarsely.

For fear clutched him by the throat. The gift of pearls, the little scene
of last night, and Damaris' emotion in bidding Carteret farewell,
confronted him. The idea had never occurred to him before. Now it glared
at him, or rather he glared at it. It would be torment to say "yes"; and
yet very difficult to say his best friend "nay." Anger kindled against
Henrietta Frayling. Must this be regarded as her handiwork? Yet he could
hardly credit it. Or had she some other candidate--Peregrine Ditton,
young Harry Ellice?--But they were mere boys.--Of Marshall Wace he never
thought, the young man being altogether outside his field of vision in
this connection.

Long habit of personal chastity made Charles Verity turn, with a greater
stabbing and rending of repulsion, from the thought of marriage for
Damaris. She asserted she had no wish to marry, that she--bless her sweet
simplicity!--would rather not. But this bare broaching of the subject
threw him into so strange a tumult that, only too evidently, he was no
competent observer, he laboured under too violent a prejudice. He had no
right to demand from others the abstinence he chose himself to practise.
Carteret, in desiring her, was within his rights. Damaris within hers,
were she moved by his suit. Marriage is natural, wholesome, the
God-ordained law and sanction of human increase since man first drew
breath here upon earth. To condemn obedience to that law, by placing any
parental embargo upon Damaris' marriage, would be both a defiance of
nature and act of grossest selfishness.

He sat down on the window-seat again; and forced himself to put his arm
around that fair maiden body, destined to be the prize, one day, of some
man's love; the prey--for he disdained to mince matters, turning the
knife in the wound rather--the prey