"Cold;--but not ice-cold, as would have been the other. Cold, but not wretchedly cold, as would be the idea always present to me that I had reduced you to poverty. Frank, I am so far selfish that I cannot bear to abandon the idea of your love. But I am not so far selfish as to wish to possess it at the expense of your comfort. Shall it be so?" "Be how?" said he, speaking almost in anger. "Let us remain just as we are. Only you will promise me, that as I cannot be your wife there shall be no other. I need hardly promise you that there will be no other husband." Now he sat frowning at her, while she, still pressing back her hair with her hands, looked eagerly into his face. "If this will be enough for you," she said, "it shall be enough for me." "No, by G----d!" "Frank!" "It will certainly not be enough for me. I will have nothing to do with so damnable a compact." "Damnable!" "Yes; that is what I call it. That is what any man would call it,--and any woman, too, who would speak her mind." "Then, Sir, perhaps you will be kind enough to make your proposition. I have made mine, such as it is, and am sorry that it should not have been received at any rate with courtesy." But as she said this there was a gleam of a bright spirit in her eyes, such as he had not seen since first the name of Gertrude had been mentioned to her. "Yes," said he. "You have made your proposition, and now it is only fair that I should make mine. Indeed, I made it already when I suggested that little place abroad. Let it be abroad or at home, or of what nature it may,--so that you shall be there, and I with you, it shall be enough for me. That is my proposition; and, if it be not accepted, then I shall return to Miss Tringle and all the glories of Lombard Street." "Frank--" she said. Then, before she could speak another word, he had risen from his seat, and she was in his arms. "Frank," she continued, pushing back his kisses, "how impossible it is that I should not be obedient to you in all things! I know,--I know that I am agreeing to that which will cause you some day to repent." "By heavens, no!" said he. "I am changed in all that." "A man cannot change at once. Your heart is soft, but your nature remains the same. Frank, I could be so happy at this moment if I could forget the picture which my imagination points to me of your future life. Your love, and your generous words, and the look out of your dear eyes, are sweet to me now, as when I was a child, whom you first made so proud by telling her that she owned your heart. If I could only revel in the return of your affections--" "It is no return," said he. "There has never been a moment in which my affections have not been the same." "Well, then,--in these permitted signs of your affection,--if it were not that I cannot shut out the future! Do not press me to name any early day, because no period of my future life will be so happy to me as this."