"Had not you better send out your opinion by the next India mail? Betsy has sailed by this time, and will just get out in time to receive your letter." "Then, if you are not Betsy Juffles, tell me, in Heaven's name, who and what you are?" "I'm a young girl of nineteen, who promised once to accept the hand of a young gentleman of the name of Rayleigh, who told me a hundred times he did not care about my family--that it was myself only he cared for: and he even went down to tell his father of the resolution he had taken, without making enquiry as to either my birth, parentage, or education. A wild young man he was, and rather changeable; for sometimes he would have made sonnets to my eyebrows, if he had had the gift of verse; sometimes he would have stabbed me to the heart, if he had had a dagger; sometimes I was his adorable Lucy Ashton; then his tantalizing Miss Poggs; then his hated Betsy; whereas, all the time, I was nothing but the selfsame anonymous but fascinating creature, who under all these names, and in spite of all these variations in his humour, loved him very truly, and has no doubt whatever of being his wife." "You!--it would be safer to marry an incarnate demon!" "Ah, safer perhaps; but not so respectable! Come, do sit down; what's the use of ceremony among friends and neighbours? Has your father consented to the match?" "Do you think I asked him?" "Why not? you don't like Gretna Green better, do you?" "By no means--my intentions are changed." "But you forget that I am neither Betsy Juffles nor Miss Poggs; I am nothing but Lucy Ashton." "I wish you had never been any thing else," I said, beginning to soften; for who could resist such a voice and such eyes? "Well, I tell you I am _not_ changed--will that not satisfy you? Imagine that all that has passed since we parted here is a dream; that Verbena Lodge has no existence, and that Mr Dobble is an ass! Won't you sit down beside me, Edgar?" I threw myself upon the turf, and she went on. "I grant I have been a little capricious, Edgar, but there were reasons for it, believe me." "What reason could there be for all these mysteries?" "Why, in the first place, it was very amusing; in the next place, you did not know your own mind; in the next place, it was romantic; in the next place, I wanted to try you if your love was really sincere." "And you found it wanting," I said in a tone of self-reproach. "Not a bit," she replied, with a look that showed she knew my heart a great deal better than I did myself. "At this moment I believe your affection for me rises triumphant above the horrors of Betsy Juffles or Miss Poggs; and so I think I shall reward you at last with an open explanation of who I am." "No, dearest Lucy Ashton!" I said, taking her hand, "not before I swear that it is yourself only I care for--that I love you more than words can tell."