"Give me your promise," he said, dropping his voice very low, "just give me your promise. I'll not hurry you a bit. Give me your promise that in the future, say in a year (I'll give you a whole year, yes I will, although it goes hard with me)--say in a year, you will be mine, you'll come to me as my little wife, and I won't bother you, upon my soul I won't, before the time. I'll go away from 17 Graham Square, I will, yes I will. The mater can stay, she likes looking after people, and she is downright fond of you, but I won't worry you. Say you'll be my little wife, and you need not have another care. The bills shall be paid, and we'll close the place gradually. The boarding-house, on its present terms, cannot go on, but we will close up gradually, and poor old Miss Mullins need not be a pauper for the rest of her days. She's a right down good sort, and I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll start her in a little boarding-house of a humble kind on my own hook. Yes, I will, and she shall make a tidy fortune out of it. I'll do all that, and for you, for _you_, and you have only got to promise." "But I cannot," I said, and now I began to sob. "Oh, I cannot. You don't want a wife who doesn't love you at all." "Not even a little bit?" he said, and there was a pathetic ring in his voice. "Aren't you sure that you love me just a very little bit? Well, well, you will some day; you will when you know me better. I am a very rough sort of diamond, Miss Wickham, but I am a diamond all the same, if being true and honourable and honest and straightforward means anything at all. I don't want to speak too well of myself, but I do know that in my entire life I have never done a real mean or shabby thing. I am an honest fellow out and out, Miss Wickham, and I offer you all I have, and I will get you out of this scrape in a twinkling, that I will. You thought, perhaps, your fine friend Mr. Randolph would do it, but when he guessed how things were going he cut off fast enough to the other side of the world." "I won't let you speak of him like that," I cried, and my voice rose again with anger, and the pity I had felt for Mr. Fanning a moment ago vanished as if it had never existed. "Mr. Randolph has been our true, true friend, and he may be dead now. Oh, you are cruel to speak of him like that!" "Very well, we won't talk of him. It is unkind to abuse the dead," said Mr. Fanning in a low, considerate sort of voice. "He sailed, poor chap, in the _Star of Hope_, and the _Star of Hope_ has been wrecked. He will never come back to bother anybody again, so we won't talk of him." I was silent. A cold, faint feeling was stealing over me.