‘Think a moment, darling. That is how it would end, anyhow. Well, it might be banns,’ said Oswald, gradually coming to the surface again, feeling his heart rise and a furtive smile come to his lips. ‘Think, only. In a week or two, in a month or two, this is what would happen, with nothing but fuss, and bother, and separation, and ceremony between. Agnes! oh, I know you are not just a girl like so many, that care for these foolish things, that like a fine wedding and all the folly of it. I will take you to the woman of the inn, and put you in her care--and I will bring my mother if you please----’ ‘No, no,’ she cried. ‘Your mother! Oh, she must not hear, must not see me like this.’ ‘But it is all my fault. Agnes, the licence is far the shortest way. We will go quietly up to town and be married, and then what can anyone say to us? They may say we have been silly. For my part, I think it is the wisest, by far the most sensible thing that anyone could do,’ said Oswald, getting up and up to his natural level of lightheartedness. Agnes seemed to feel her own heart sinking lower and lower as he spoke; but what was she to do? ‘There’s an inn in the village, sir, that is clean and respectable,’ said the station master, coming up. ‘And I’m sorry to disturb you, and sorry for what’s happened, but you can’t keep the lady sitting out here; and the night’s getting a bit chilly, for the dew is heavy after such a day. And we’re going to shut up,’ the man added, becoming imperative, as it were, in this postscript. Oswald asked when the first train stopped in the morning, while Agnes rose and stood by, her whole frame throbbing and thrilling. She whose life had been so calm and still, with never a shock or startling incident in it, no emergencies to call out her judgment, how was she to know now how to act in this terrible crisis which had come unexpected, without a moment’s preparation, into her life? CHAPTER XL. TWO--PARTED.