In those uncivilized days, the Marriage Act had not been passed, and there was no convenient hymeneal registrar in England to change a vagabond runaway couple into a respectable man and wife at a moment’s notice.  The trouble and expense of taking Mrs. Baggs with us, I encountered, of course, solely out of regard for Alicia’s natural prejudices.  She had led precisely that kind of life which makes any woman but a bad one morbidly sensitive on the subject of small proprieties.  If she had been a girl with a recognized position in society, I should have proposed to her to run away with me alone.  As it was, the very defenselessness of her situation gave her, in my opinion, the right to expect from me even the absurdest sacrifices to the narrowest conventionalities.  Mrs. Baggs was not quite so sober in her habits, perhaps, as matrons in general are expected to be; but, for my particular purpose, this was only a slight blemish; it takes so little, after all, to represent the abstract principle of propriety in the short-sighted eye of the world.

As I reached the drawing-room door, I looked at my watch.

Nine o’clock! and nothing done yet to facilitate our escaping from Crickgelly to the regions of civilized life the next morning.  I was pleased to hear, when I knocked at the door, that Alicia’s voice sounded firmer as she told me to come in.  She was more confused than astonished or frightened when I sat down by her on the sofa, and repeated the principal topics of my conversion with Mrs. Baggs.

“Now, my own love,” I said, in conclusion—­suiting my gestures, it is unnecessary to say, to the tenderness of my language—­“there is not the least doubt that Mrs. Baggs will end by agreeing to my proposals.  Nothing remains, therefore, but for you to give me the answer now, which I have been waiting for ever since that last day when we met by the riverside.  I did not know then what the motive was for your silence and distress.  I know now, and I love you better after that knowledge than I did before it.”

Her head dropped into its former position on my bosom, and she murmured a few words, but too faintly for me to hear them.

“You knew more about your father, then, than I did?” I whispered.

“Less than you have told me since,” she interposed quickly, without raising her face.

“Enough to convince you that he was breaking the laws,” I suggested; “and, to make you, as his daughter, shrink from saying ‘yes’ to me when we sat together on the river bank?”

She did not answer.  One of her arms, which was hanging over my shoulder, stole round my neck, and clasped it gently.