This time the laugh was not to be put down.  “I confess I shouldn’t,” she said.

“Thought so,” he replied, as one versed.  His tones took on a nasal twang.  “Well, as I was saying, I’ve about got ready to settle down, and I’ve had my eye on the lady this seven years.”

“Marvel of constancy!” said Virginia.  “And the lady?”

“The lady,” said Eliphalet, bluntly, “is you.”  He glanced at her bewildered face and went on rapidly:  “You pleased me the first day I set eyes on you in the store I said to myself, ’Hopper, there’s the one for you to marry.’  I’m plain, but my folks was good people.  I set to work right then to make a fortune for you, Miss Jinny.  You’ve just what I need.  I’m a plain business man with no frills.  You’ll do the frills.  You’re the kind that was raised in the lap of luxury.  You’ll need a man with a fortune, and a big one; you’re the sort to show it off.  I’ve got the foundations of that fortune, and the proof of it right here.  And I tell you,”—­his jaw was set,—­“I tell you that some day Eliphalet Hopper will be one of the richest men in the West.”

He had stopped, facing her in the middle of the way, his voice strong, his confidence supreme.  At first she had stared at him in dumb wonder.  Then, as she began to grasp the meaning of his harangue, astonishment was still dominant,—­sheer astonishment.  She scarcely listened.  But, as he finished, the thatch of the summer house caught her eye.  A vision arose of a man beside whom Eliphalet was not worthy to crawl.  She thought of Stephen as he had stood that evening in the sunset, and this proposal seemed a degradation.  This brute dared to tempt her with money.  Scalding words rose to her lips.  But she caught the look on Eliphalet’s face, and she knew that he would not understand.  This was one who rose and fell, who lived and loved and hated and died and was buried by—­money.

For a second she looked into his face as one who escapes a pit gazes over the precipice, and shuddered.  As for Eliphalet, let it not be thought that he had no passion.  This was the moment for which he had lived since the day he had first seen her and been scorned in the store.  That type of face, that air,—­these were the priceless things he would buy with his money.  Crazed with the very violence of his long-pent desire, he seized her hand.  She wrung it free again.

“How—­how dare you!” she cried.

He staggered back, and stood for a moment motionless, as though stunned.  Then, slowly, a light crept into his little eyes which haunted her for many a day.

“You—­won’t—­marry me?” he said.

“Oh, how dare you ask me!” exclaimed Virginia, her face burning with the shame of it.  She was standing with her hands behind her, her back against a great walnut trunk, the crusted branches of which hung over the bluff.  Even as he looked at her, Eliphalet lost his head, and indiscretion entered his soul.