Cecil coloured angrily, and then burst out laughing.

“I can’t afford to quarrel with you in this disgusting desolation, it would be like the two men in the lighthouse; but remember, sir, it goes down to your account when I am restored to my friends.”

“The captive should not use threats.  I am not intimidated.  What should now forbid that I whirl you away on the next car to Ne Yock, and marry you right off? and then you would have to obey me ever afterwards.”

“Bertie, you forget yourself,” with great dignity and rising colour.

“I can’t help my unselfish nature.  I never do think of myself.  Seriously, Cecil, would it not be a good plan?”

“I hardly understand how you would effect it in broad daylight against my will.”

“Nothing more easy.  I shouldn’t put you into the train till it was just going, and I am sure you would have too much self-respect to make a disturbance.  If you did, I would point to my forehead, and shake my head expressively.  Then, probably, the guard would assist me.  After we were married, I should shut you up for a time to reconcile you to the situation, and by degrees, if you pleased me, I would allow you more liberty.”

“Suppose I ran away and never returned.”

“Oh, you would always be watched, I should, perhaps, let you get a little distance to encourage you, and then bring you back again.”

Cecil would not vouchsafe a retort.  She thought Bertie’s behaviour in the very worst taste, and had never known him so little agreeable.  But there they were incarcerated, and the wind still howled.  “How was it they were so little in tune,” she wondered, “wasting time with this tactless badinage?” Bertie, too, whose greatest charm was his lightning perception of all her thoughts and feelings, could he possibly think—­and here a hot glow mounted to her cheeks, which were not cooled by feeling her hand suddenly captured by Du Meresq, as he whispered in her ear,—­

“As we always get into scrapes together, don’t you think, Cecil, for the future we had better only be responsible to each other?”

“I think,” said she, flaming up at last, and her bright eyes flashing indignantly upon him, “that your conduct is idiotic and ungentlemanly:  What right have you to make me the subject of your silly jokes?”

“I have made you look at me at last,” cried he, “though I am almost ‘blasted with excess of light.’  Dearest Cecil, you must know what I have come to Rice Lake for, and that you can make me the happiest or most miserable fellow breathing.”

Bertie’s eyes were glowing with earnestness, and his whole manner was as eager as it had before been inert.  Cecil was dumb from contending emotions, love, pride, and doubt, all at war; yet a small voice in her heart kept repeating “At last!”

“You must have known my wishes ever since we parted at Montreal,” pleaded Bertie. ("I was by no means so certain,” thought Cecil.) “I could not speak then; your father will, perhaps, think I oughtn’t to now.  Yet, at least I can say honestly, will you marry me, my dearest little Cecil?”