’Ah!  I would guarantee expenses, and you won’t let me!  The money is my personal possession:  it comes to me from my late grandfather, and not from my father at all.’

He laughed forcedly and pressed her hand.  ’There are more reasons why I cannot tear myself away,’ he added.  ’What would become of my uncle’s farming?  Six hundred acres in this parish, and five hundred in the next—­a constant traipsing from one farm to the other; he can’t be in two places at once.  Still, that might be got over if it were not for the other matters.  Besides, dear, I still should be a little uneasy, even though I have your promise, lest somebody should snap you up away from me.’

’Ah, you should have thought of that before.  Otherwise I have committed myself for nothing.’

‘I should have thought of it,’ he answered gravely.  ’But I did not.  There lies my fault, I admit it freely.  Ah, if you would only commit yourself a little more, I might at least get over that difficulty!  But I won’t ask you.  You have no idea how much you are to me still; you could not argue so coolly if you had.  What property belongs to you I hate the very sound of; it is you I care for.  I wish you hadn’t a farthing in the world but what I could earn for you!’

‘I don’t altogether wish that,’ she murmured.

’I wish it, because it would have made what I was going to propose much easier to do than it is now.  Indeed I will not propose it, although I came on purpose, after what you have said in your frankness.’

‘Nonsense, Nic.  Come, tell me.  How can you be so touchy?’

‘Look at this then, Christine dear.’  He drew from his breast-pocket a sheet of paper and unfolded it, when it was observable that a seal dangled from the bottom.

‘What is it?’ She held the paper sideways, so that what there was of window-light fell on its surface.  ’I can only read the Old English letters—­why—­our names!  Surely it is not a marriage-licence?’

‘It is.’

She trembled.  ‘O Nic! how could you do this—­and without telling me!’

’Why should I have thought I must tell you?  You had not spoken “frankly” then as you have now.  We have been all to each other more than these two years, and I thought I would propose that we marry privately, and that I then leave you on the instant.  I would have taken my travelling-bag to church, and you would have gone home alone.  I should not have started on my adventures in the brilliant manner of our original plan, but should have roughed it a little at first; my great gain would have been that the absolute possession of you would have enabled me to work with spirit and purpose, such as nothing else could do.  But I dare not ask you now—­so frank as you have been.’

She did not answer.  The document he had produced gave such unexpected substantiality to the venture with which she had so long toyed as a vague dream merely, that she was, in truth, frightened a little.  ’I—­don’t know about it!’ she said.