‘You’ll run away with me, and marry me. ’Tis as easy as the alphabet if once we get to London.’ ‘Oh, but my father,’ protested Carrie. ‘Well, it has come to this: you must choose betwixt him and me; he will never allow you to marry me if he knows.’ ‘But ’tis so sudden, Phil!—if I had even a day to consider the matter.’ ‘You have scarce an hour,’ said Phil; ‘by now your father has that letter, by another hour, if I mistake not, he will be on his way here; by the evening he will have arrived. You must come with me now, now, now—or——’ The unspoken alternative of separation struck coldly on Carrie’s ear. Yet another love, older, steadier, plucked at her heart—she was torn between the two. ‘Ah, Phil,’ she cried, ‘I cannot leave you, and I cannot grieve my father. What am I to do? O what a sad thing trouble is—I have never known it before!’ (I doubt if she ever had.) Phil was not, perhaps, as diligent a Biblical student as he might have been, but his researches in that direction came to his aid at this moment. ‘Oh, you know, Carrie, there is Scripture for that,’ he said, ‘about “leaving father and mother and cleaving to your wife”—that’s the rule for men, and I dare swear it holds good for women too.’ ‘Do you think so? But I would not grieve my father for the world,’ hesitated Carrie. Phil grew impatient, for time was racing on, the sun was high in the heavens now. ‘You must—you must; can you bear to think of never seeing me again? I’d sooner miss the sun out of the sky than you, Carrie.’ Carrie seemed to herself to be whirled round and round in the eddies of Phil’s passion; she could not gainsay him, and yet she trembled and held back. ‘Yes—ah, yes—I would go to the world’s end with you, Phil,’ she said, ‘if it were not for fear to grieve my father.’ She rose and paced up and down the bank in an agony of indecision, clasping her hands together and then flinging them out with a gesture of helpless bewilderment. Never in life before had Carrie been called upon to make a decision of any importance, and now the two strongest affections of her heart warred together for the victory. Phil came and paced beside her, arguing, beseeching, coaxing her by turns—till she turned at last in despair and laid her hands in his. ‘I will come with you,’ she said. Phil did not allow the grass to grow under his feet. ‘Come then, so quickly as you can, Carrie,’ he cried, ‘for each moment is precious. I shall return to Fairmeadowes and tell them I am gone out for the day. You must go home and put on your habit, and get one of your good aunt’s horses.’ ‘I am not permitted to ride alone,’ said Carrie, who saw lions in the way at every turn. Phil laughed, and put his hand in his pocket. ‘Here, Carrie,’ he said, ‘give me your hand.’ Carrie all unsuspicious laid her hand in his. ‘That is what you must do to your aunt’s groom, my child; there never was groom yet but understood that argument,’ said Phil.