ad, or the old lady's. Let's get it over to-morrow morning, and
come to Ireland with me; you've never been there."

"Phil, what nonsense! mamma would go out of her senses."

"My pet, what does it matter? She'd come back to them again as soon as
we were gone, and think what a botheration spared her! All the row of
receiving people, turning the house upside down. And here I am on the
spot. And what do you want with bridesmaids and so forth? You've got all
your things. Suppose we walk out to church to-morrow before breakfast,
Nell----"

"Phil, you are mad, I think; and why should we do such a thing,
scandalizing everybody? But of course you don't mean it. You are excited
after seeing that man."

"Excited about Stanny!--not such a fool; Stanny is all square, thanks
to---- But what I want is just to take you up in my arms, like this, and
run off with you, Nell. Why we should call the whole world to watch us
while we take that swing off--into space."

"Phil!"

"So it is, for you, Nell. You don't know a bit what's going to happen.
You don't know where I'm going to take you, and what I'm going to do
with you, you little innocent lamb in the wolf's grip. I want to eat you
up, straight off. I shall be afraid up to the last moment that you'll
escape me, Nell."

"I did not know that you were so fond of innocence," said Elinor, half
afraid of her lover's vehemence, and trying to dispel his gravity with a
laugh. "You used to say you did not believe in the _ingenue_."

"I believe in you," he said, with an almost fierce pressure of her arm;
then, after a pause, "No, I don't believe in women at all, Nell, only
you. They're rather worse than men, which is saying a good deal. What
would the Jew care if we were all drawn and quartered; so long as she
had all her paraphernalia about her and got everything she wanted? For
right-down selfishness commend me to a woman. A fellow may have gleams
of something better about him, like me, warning you against myself."

"It is a droll way of warning me against yourself to want to carry me
off to-morrow."

"It's all the same thing," he said. "I've warned you that those old hags
are right, and I'm not good enough for you, not fit to come near you,
Nell. But if the sacrifice is to be, let's get it over at once, don't
let us stand and think of it. I'm capable of jilting you," he said,
"leaving you _plante la_, all out of remorse of conscience; or else just
catching you up in my arms, like this