ing yourself to marry me? Oh, I know you're
surprised--I ought not to spring it on you like this--but if you will be
my wife I will do my best to make you happy."

There was a silence. Suddenly an owl flew, hooting, past the window, and
in the dusk his white wings looked ghostly, unreal.

Then, quite quietly, Toni spoke.

"Mr. Rose, do you mean it? You want to marry me?"

"Yes, dear." For an instant he spoke as one speaks to a child, so
powerful was the illusion of youth in the large-eyed Toni just then.
"Well, what do you say? Will you have me?"

He was still sitting in the big chair opposite to her, one hand on the
arm, the other clenched on his knee; and he was unprepared for Toni's
answer.

With a sudden rush she was out of her chair, and the next moment she was
kneeling beside him, her face all aglow with love and wonder.

"You mean it?" She could only, it seemed, question his meaning.
"But--how did you know I loved you, Mr. Rose? I never let you see--did
I?"

With that soft, sparkling face upturned to his, those Italian eyes
gazing at him with an intensity of appeal in their liquid depths, one
answer alone was possible.

"No, Toni, you never let me see that! But if it's true--if you do love
me a little--well, is it--yes?"

For answer she suddenly laid her head on his knee and burst into a
passion of wild sobbing. Poor, emotional, overwrought little Toni! Why
she wept she had no idea, but it was the same emotion which had made
her, as a child, weep at the sight of a group of violets growing in the
grass, at the sound of the shepherd's pipe, the scent of the sea-laden
breeze. Although her heart was so full of bliss that she could scarcely
bear it, there was a wild, inexplicable sadness in it too, which tears
alone could assuage; and though she tried to recapture her self-control,
it was useless until she had cried away the first bewilderment.

But Owen, unused to the complex Southern nature, was thoroughly
nonplussed by her tears. In vain he besought her to calm herself, begged
her to listen to him, to refuse him if the thought of his offer made her
miserable. Toni only cried the harder; and at last, uncertain of his
ground, but feeling that something must be done, Owen stooped down and
lifted her bodily on to his knee.

Once in his arms, her tears ceased as if by magic. She lay against his
heart like a child, and as he felt her little body in his arms a new
feeling of pity, almost of gratitude, awoke