“Walter and Florence have offered to lend us their cottage at Witley. We can go to it to-morrow—if it is convenient to you, dear Alfred,” she added meekly. “I shall not go there,” he said sullenly; and for a moment he looked her full in the face with his dull eyes. “I thought the air of that locality was always beneficial to you,” she said, in the same tone in which she had last spoken. “Thank you, I don’t wish to go to that ‘locality,’ and be laughed at.” He half mocked her as he spoke. “Why should you be laughed at?” she asked, with almost a cry of pain in her voice, for she knew what the answer would be, beforehand; but the words were forced from her, she could not help them. He coughed and looked at her again. “People generally laugh at a young man who marries an old woman, Anne.” She got up and went to the end of the room, and came back again, and put her hand upon his shoulder. “No one is there to laugh,” she said. “There is no one there to know. We need not keep any society.” She did not see the absurdity of the last remark, and made it quite gravely. “There are only a few people in the neighbourhood at all, and those of an inferior class. It does not matter what they think.” “It matters to me what every one thinks.” “We cannot remain here much longer,” she went on. “The landlady was most impertinent to-day. I think Florence and Walter would help to pay her if we went to the cottage to-morrow. They said they would arrange everything.” “It is a long way from Liphook,” he said, almost to himself; “if any one saw us, they wouldn’t suspect that we were married. They would think you were my aunt, perhaps.” “They may think what they please, Alfred,” she answered, “if you are only with me.” Then her voice changed. “My dear one, I cannot bear life unless you are gentle to me,” she pleaded; “and I cannot bear it here alone any longer, always away from you, day after day. I am your wife, Alfred, and, if I am an old woman, I love you with all the years I remember, and all the love that has been stored up in me since my youth. I want to be near you, to take care of you, to see that you have comforts. You can say that I am your aunt, if it pleases you. I never feel that I am your wife, only that it is my great privilege to be near you and to serve you.” She stopped, as if unable to go on, and he was silent a moment or two before he answered. “It might be a good idea; as you say, there is no one about there to know.” “Are you ashamed of me?” “I don’t want to look ridiculous.” Then a flash came into her eyes, and the old spirit asserted itself.