“Hush, hush, sir!  I cannot hear this,” said Anne, anxiously glancing down the street in hopes of seeing her uncle approaching.

“Nay, but listen!  This is my only hope—­my only chance—­I must speak—­you doom me to you know not what if you will not hear me!”

“Indeed, sir, I neither will nor ought!”

“Ought!  Ought!  Ought you not to save a fellow-creature from distraction and destruction?  One who has loved and looked to you ever since you and that saint your mother lifted me out of the misery of my childhood.”

Then as she looked softened he went on:  “You, you are my one hope.  No one else can lift me out of the reach of the demon that has beset me even since I was born.”

“That is profane,” she said, the more severe for the growing attraction of repulsion.

“What do I care?  It is true!  What was I till you and your mother took pity on the wild imp?  My old nurse said a change would come to me every seven years.  That blessed change came just seven years ago.  Give me what will make a more blessed—­a more saving change—­ or there will be one as much for the worse.”

“But—­I could not.  No! you must see for yourself that I could not—­ even if I would,” she faltered, really pitying now, and unwilling to give more pain than she could help.

“Could not?  It should be possible.  I know how to bring it about.  Give me but your promise, and I will make you mine—­ay, and I will make myself as worthy of you as man can be of saint-like maid.”

“No—­no!  This is very wrong—­you are pledged already—­”

“No such thing—­believe no such tale.  My promise has never been given to that grim hag of my father’s choice—­no, nor should be forced from me by the rack.  Look you here.  Let me take this hand, call in the woman of the house, give me your word, and my father will own his power to bind me to Martha is at an end.”

“Oh, no!  It would be a sin—­never.  Besides—­” said Anne, holding her hands tightly clasped behind her in alarm, lest against her will she should let them be seized, and trying to find words to tell him how little she felt disposed to trust her heart and herself to one whom she might indeed pity, but with a sort of shrinking as from something not quite human.  Perhaps he dreaded her ’besides’—­for he cut her short.

“It would save ten thousand greater sins.  See, here are two ways before us.  Either give me your word, your precious word, go silent to London, leave me to struggle it out with my father and your uncle and follow you.  Hope and trust will be enough to bear me through the battle without, and within deafen the demon of my nature, and render me patient of my intolerable life till I have conquered and can bring you home.”

Her tongue faltered as she tried to say such a secret unsanctioned engagement would be treachery, but he cut off the words.