nd I hated myself for doing it."

"Virginia, will you marry me?"

"Yes."

"To-morrow?"

"Yes, dear, to-morrow." Faintly, "I have no one but you--now."

Once more he drew her to him, and she gloried in his strength.

"God help me to cherish you, dear," he said, "and guard you well."

She drew away from him, gently, and turned toward the window.

"See, Stephen," she cried, "the sun has come out at last."

For a while they were silent, looking out; the drops glistened on blade
and leaf, and the joyous new green of the earth entered into their
hearts.

CHAPTER XVI

ANNAPOLIS

IT was Virginia's wish, and was therefore sacred. As for Stephen, he
little cared whither they went. And so they found themselves on that
bright afternoon in mid-April under the great trees that arch the unpaved
streets of old Annapolis.

They stopped by direction at a gate, and behind it was a green cluster of
lilac bushes, which lined the walk to the big plum-colored house which
Lionel Carvel had built. Virginia remembered that down this walk on a
certain day in June, a hundred years agone, Richard Carvel had led
Dorothy Manners.

They climbed the steps, tottering now with age and disuse, and Virginia
playfully raised the big brass knocker, brown now, that Scipio had been
wont to polish until it shone. Stephen took from his pocket the clumsy
key that General Carvel had given him, and turned it in the rusty lock.
The door swung open, and Virginia stood in the hall of her ancestors.

It was musty and damp this day as the day when Richard had come back from
England and found it vacant and his grandfather dead. But there, at the
parting of the stairs, was the triple-arched window which he had
described. Through it the yellow afternoon light was flooding now, even
as then, checkered by the branches in their first fringe of green. But
the tall clock which Lionel Carvel used to wind was at Calvert House,
with many another treasure.

They went up the stairs, and reverently they walked over the bare floors,
their footfalls echoing through the silent house. A score of scenes in
her great-grandfather's life came to Virginia. Here was the room--the
cornet one at the back of the main building, which looked out over the
deserted garden--that had been Richard's mother's. She recalled how he
had stolen into it on that summer's day after his return, and had flung
open the shutters. They were open now, for their locks were off. The
prie-dieu