together." Here he paused--then added in a
lower tone--"And I could not bear to lose you!"

She was silent. But her face grew pale, and her lips quivered. He saw
the tremor pass over her, and inwardly rejoiced,--his own nerves
thrilling as he realised that, after all, _if_--if she loved him, he was
the master of her fate.

"We've been such good friends," he went on, dallying with his own desire
to know the best or worst--"Haven't we?"

"Indeed, yes!" she answered, somewhat faintly. "And I hope we always
will be."

"I hope so, too!" he answered in quite a matter-of-fact way. "You see
I'm rather a clumsy chap with women----"

She smiled a little.

"Are you?"

"Yes,--I mean I never get on with them quite as well as other fellows do
somehow--and--er--and--what I want to say, Miss Mary, is that I've never
got on with any woman so well as I have with you--and----"

He paused. At no time in his life had he been at such a loss for
language. His heart was thumping in the most extraordinary fashion, and
he prodded the end of his walking-stick into the ground with quite a
ferocious earnestness. She was still looking at him and still smiling.

"And," he went on ramblingly, "that's why I hope we shall always be good
friends."

As he uttered this perfectly commonplace remark, he cursed himself for a
fool. "What's the matter with me?" he inwardly demanded. "My tongue
seems to be tied up!--or I'm going to have lockjaw! It's awful!
Something better than this has got to come out of me somehow!" And
acting on a brilliant flash of inspiration which suddenly seemed to have
illumined his brain, he said--

"The fact is, I want to get married. I'm thinking about it."

How quiet she was! She seemed scarcely to breathe.

"Yes?" and the word, accentuated without surprise and merely as a
question, was spoken very gently. "I do hope you have found some one who
loves you with all her heart!"

She turned her head away, and Angus saw, or thought he saw, the bright
tears brim up from under her lashes and slowly fall. Without another
instant's pause he rushed upon his destiny, and in that rush grew
strong.

"Yes, Mary!" he said, and moving to her side he caught her hand in his
own--"I dare to think I have found that some one! I believe I have! I
believe that a woman whom I love with all my heart, loves me in return!
If I am mistaken, then I've lost the whole world! Tell me, Mary! Am I
wrong?"

She could not speak,--the tears were t