"But there's a clergyman there, I'm told." "I don't think this man was in orders. But he might have been. Parsons come out in so many shapes! This man called himself a count. It was seven years ago." "I am speaking of to-day." "I've not been there since." "Would you like to go there,--with me?" "It isn't a nice sort of place, I should say, for a honeymoon. But you shall choose. When we are married you shall go where you like." "To be married!" she exclaimed. "Married at Ostend! Would your mother like that?" "Mother! Oh, dear!" "I'll be shot if I know what you're after, Gertrude. If you've got anything to say you'd better speak out. I want to go up to the house now." They had now taken one or two turns between the lodge and a point in the road from which the house could be observed, and at which Tom could still be seen wandering about, thinking no doubt of Ayala. Here Frank stopped as though determined not to turn to the lodge again. It was wonderful to Gertrude that he should not have understood what she had already said. When he talked of her mother going with them to the Ostend marriage she was almost beside herself. This lover of hers was a man of the world and must have heard of elopements. But now had come a time in which she must be plain, unless she made up her mind to abandon her plan altogether. "Frank," she said, "if you were to run away with me, then we could be married at Ostend." "Run away with you!" "It wouldn't be the first time that such a thing has been done." "The commonest thing in the world, my dear, when a girl has got her money in her own hands. Nothing I should like so much." "Money! It's always money. It's nothing but the money, I believe." "That's unkind, Gertrude." "Ain't you unkind? You won't do anything I ask." "My darling, that hashed mutton and those baked potatoes are too clear before my eyes." "You think of nothing, I believe, but your dinner." "I think, unfortunately, of a great many other things. Hashed mutton is simply symbolical. Under the head of hashed mutton I include poor lodgings, growlers when we get ourselves asked to eat a dinner at somebody's table, limited washing-bills, table-napkins rolled up in their dirt every day for a week, antimacassars to save the backs of the chairs, a picture of you darning my socks while I am reading a newspaper hired at a halfpenny from the public-house round the corner, a pint of beer in the pewter between us,--and perhaps two babies in one cradle because we can't afford to buy a second." "Don't, Sir." "In such an emergency I am bound to give you the advantage both of my experience and imagination." "Experience!" "Not about the cradles! That is imagination. My darling, it won't do. You and I have not been brought up to make ourselves happy on a very limited income." "Papa would be sure to give us the money," she said, eagerly. "In such a matter as this, where your happiness is concerned, my dear, I will trust no one." "My happiness!"