tience, Robert, till the moon rises and I can see you. Speak
plain out--did you love her or not? I could like to know. I feel
curious."

"Sir--sir--I say--she is very pretty, in her own style, and very
attractive. She has a look, at times, of a thing made out of fire and
air, at which I stand and marvel, without a thought of clasping and
kissing it. I felt in her a powerful magnet to my interest and vanity. I
never felt as if nature meant her to be my other and better self. When a
question on that head rushed upon me, I flung it off, saying brutally I
should be rich with her and ruined without her--vowing I would be
practical, and not romantic."

"A very sensible resolve. What mischief came of it, Bob?"

"With this sensible resolve I walked up to Fieldhead one night last
August. It was the very eve of my departure for Birmingham; for, you
see, I wanted to secure Fortune's splendid prize. I had previously
dispatched a note requesting a private interview. I found her at home,
and alone.

"She received me without embarrassment, for she thought I came on
business. _I_ was embarrassed enough, but determined. I hardly know how
I got the operation over; but I went to work in a hard, firm
fashion--frightful enough, I dare say. I sternly offered myself--my fine
person--with my debts, of course, as a settlement.

"It vexed me, it kindled my ire, to find that she neither blushed,
trembled, nor looked down. She responded, 'I doubt whether I have
understood you, Mr. Moore.'

"And I had to go over the whole proposal twice, and word it as plainly
as A B C, before she would fully take it in. And then, what did she do?
Instead of faltering a sweet Yes, or maintaining a soft, confused
silence (which would have been as good), she started up, walked twice
fast through the room, in the way that _she_ only does, and no other
woman, and ejaculated, 'God bless me!'

"Yorke, I stood on the hearth, backed by the mantelpiece; against it I
leaned, and prepared for anything--everything. I knew my doom, and I
knew myself. There was no misunderstanding her aspect and voice. She
stopped and looked at me.

"'God bless me!' she piteously repeated, in that shocked, indignant, yet
saddened accent. 'You have made a strange proposal--strange from _you_;
and if you knew how strangely you worded it and looked it, you would be
startled at yourself. You spoke like a brigand who demanded my purse
rather than like a lover who asked my heart.'

"A quee