‘Not one word of welcome, Mary?’

‘Indeed, Mr Gresham, you are welcome home.’

’Mr Gresham!  Tell me, Mary—­tell me at once—­has anything happened?  I could not ask up there.’

‘Frank,’ she said, and then stopped; not being able at the moment to get any further.

’Speak to me honestly, Mary; honestly and bravely.  I offered you my hand once before; there it is again.  Will you take it?’

She looked wistfully up in his eyes; and would fain have taken it.  But though a girl may be honest in such a case, it is so hard for her to be brave.

He still held out his hand.  ‘Mary,’ said he, ’if you can value it, it shall be yours through good fortune or ill fortune.  There may be difficulties; but if you can love me, we will get over them.  I am a free man; free to do as I please with myself, except so far as I am bound to you.  There is my hand.  Will you have it?’ And then he, too, looked into her eyes, and waited composedly, as though determined to have an answer.

She slowly raised her hand, and, as she did so, her eyes fell to the ground.  It then drooped again, and was again raised; and, at last, her light tapering fingers rested on his broad open palm.

They were soon clutched, and the whole hand brought absolutely within his grasp.  ‘There, now you are my own!’ he said, ’and none of them shall part us; my own Mary, my own wife.’

‘Oh, Frank, is not this imprudent?  Is it not wrong?’

’Imprudent!  I am sick of prudence.  I hate prudence.  And as for wrong—­no.  I say it is not wrong; certainly not wrong if we love each other.  And you do love me, Mary—­eh?  You do! don’t you?’

He would not excuse her, or allow her to escape from saying it in so many words; and when the words did come at last, they came freely.  ’Yes, Frank, I do love you; if that were all you would have no cause for fear.’

‘And I will have no cause for fear.’

’Ah; but your father, Frank, and my uncle.  I can never bring myself to do anything that shall bring either of them to sorrow.’

Frank, of course, ran through all his arguments.  He would go into a profession, or take a farm and live in it.  He would wait; that is, for a few months.  ‘A few months, Frank!’ said Mary.  ‘Well, perhaps six.’  ’Oh, Frank!’ But Frank would not be stopped.  He would do anything that his father might ask him.  Anything but the one thing.  He would not give up the wife he had chosen.  It would not be reasonable, or proper, or righteous that he should be asked to do so; and here he mounted a somewhat high horse.

Mary had no arguments which she could bring from her heart to offer in opposition of all this.  She could only leave her hand in his, and feel that she was happier than she had been at any time since the day of the donkey-ride at Boxall Hill.

‘But, Mary,’ continued he, becoming very grave and serious.  ’We must be true to each other, and firm in this.  Nothing that any of them can say shall drive me from my purpose; will you say as much?’