Yet the meal was a silent one, and as soon as it was finished they went out again on to the hazy moorland. "Are you quite rested yet, Phebe?" asked Jean Merle. "Quite," she answered, with unconscious emphasis. "And you have settled upon some plan for the future?" he said. "No," she replied; "I am altogether at a loss. There is no one in all the world who has a claim upon me, or whom I have a claim upon; no one to say to me 'Go' or 'Come.' When the world is all before you and it is an empty world, it is difficult to choose which way you will take in it." She had paused as she spoke; but now they walked on again in silence, Jean Merle looking down on her sweet yet somewhat sad face with attentive eyes. How little changed she was from the simple, faithful-hearted girl he had known long ago! There was the same candid and thoughtful expression on her face, and the same serene light in her blue eyes, as when she stood beside him, a little girl, patiently yet earnestly mastering the first difficulties of reading. There was no one in the wide world whom he knew as perfectly as he knew her; no one in the wide world who knew him as perfectly as she did. "Tell me, Phebe," he said gravely, "is it possible that you have lived so long and that no man has found out what a priceless treasure you might be to him?" "No one," she answered, with a little tremor in her voice; "only Simon Nixey," she added, laughing, as she thought of his perseverance from year to year. Jean Merle stopped and laid his hand on Phebe's arm. "Will you be my wife?" he asked. The brief question escaped him before he was aware of it. It was as utterly new to him as it was to her; yet the moment it was uttered he felt how much the happiness of his life depended upon it. Without her all the future would be dreary and lonely for him. With her--Jean Merle did not dare to think of the gladness that might yet be his. "No, no," cried Phebe, looking up into his face furrowed with deep lines; "it is impossible! You ought not to ask me." "Why?" he said. She did not move or take away her eyes from his face. A rush of sad memories and associations was sweeping across her troubled heart. She saw him as he had been long ago, so far above her that it had seemed an honor to her to do him the meanest service. She thought of Felicita in her unapproachable loveliness and stateliness; and of their home, so full to her of exquisite refinement and luxury. In the true humility of her nature she had looked up to them as far above her, dwelling on a height to which she made no claim. And this dethroned king of her early days was a king yet, though he stood before her as Jean Merle, still fast bound in the chains his sins had riveted about him.