ell rang
again.

Peg and Jerry looked at each other a moment, then she lowered her eyes.

"I want to ask ye something, Sir Gerald," she began.

"Jerry!" he corrected.

"Please forgive me for what I said to ye that day. It was wrong of me
to say it. Yet it was just what ye might have expected from me. But
ye'd been so fine to me--a little nobody--all that wonderful month that
it's hurt me ever since. And I didn't dare write to ye--it would have
looked like presumption from me. But now that ye've come here--ye've
found me out and I want to ask yer pardon--an' I want to ask ye not to
be angry with me."

"I couldn't be angry with you, Peg."

He paused, and, as he looked at her, the reserve of the held-in,
self-contained man was broken. He bent over her and said softly:

"Peg, I love you!"

A cry welled up from Peg's heart to her lips, and was stifled. The room
swam around her.

Was all her misery to end?

Did this man come back from the mists of memory BECAUSE he loved her?

She tried to speak but nothing came from her parched lips and tightened
throat.

Then she became conscious that he was speaking again, and she listened
to him with all her senses, with all her heart, and from her soul.

"I knew you would never write to me, and somehow I wondered just how
much you cared for me--if at all. So I came here. I love you, Peg. I
want you to be my wife. I want to care for you, and tend you, and make
you happy. I love you!"

Her heart leaped and strained. The blood surged to her temples.

"Do you love me?" she whispered, and her voice trembled and broke.

"I do. Indeed I do. Be my wife."

"But you have a title," she pleaded

"Share it with me!" he replied.

"Ye'd be so ashamed o' me, ye would!"

"No, Peg, I'd be proud of you. I love you!"

Peg, unable to argue or plead, or strive against what her heart yearned
for the most, broke down and sobbed as she murmured:

"I love you, too, Mister Jerry."

In a moment she was in his arms.

It was the first time anyone had touched her tenderly besides her
father. All her sturdy, boyish ruggedness shrank from any display of
affection. Just for a moment it did now. Then she slowly yielded
herself.

But Jerry stroked her hair, and looked into her eyes and smiled down at
her lovingly, as he asked:

"What will your father say?"

She looked happily up at him and answered:

"Do you know one of the first things me father taught me when I was
just a little chi