"The sooner it is done, the better, Daisy," cried Frank, going in for it now with all his characteristic eagerness. "I'd say to-morrow, if I had the license, but I must get that first. I hope and trust your mother will not be very angry!" Daisy had not lifted her face. His arm was pressed all the closer. Frank filled up an interlude by taking a kiss from the sweet lips. "Mamma said that if I did marry you, she should wash her hands of me," whispered Daisy. "Said that! Did she! Why, then, Daisy, she must have seen herself that it was our best and only resource. I look upon it almost in the light of a permission." "Do you think so?" "Of course I do. And so do you, don't you? How good of her to say it!" With the blushes that the subject called up lighting her face, they renewed their promenade amidst the trees, under the grey evening sky, talking earnestly. The matter itself settled, ways and means had to be discussed. Frank's arm was round her; her hand was again clasped in his. "Our own church at Trennach will be safest, Daisy; safest, and best: and the one most readily got to. You can come down at an early hour: eight o'clock, say. No one will be much astir here at home, and I don't think you will meet any one en route. The road is lonely enough, you know, whether you take the highway or the Bare Plain." Daisy did not answer. Her clear eyes had a far-off look in them, gazing at the grey sky. "Fortune itself seems to aid us," went on Frank, briskly. "At almost any time but this we might not have been able to accomplish it so easily. Had I gone to Mr. Pine and said, I want you to marry me and say nothing about it, he might have demurred; thought it necessary to consult Dr. Raynor first, or invented some such scruple; but with Pine away and this new man here the matter is very simple. And so, Daisy, my best love, if you will be early at the church the day after to-morrow, I shall be there waiting for you." "What do you call early?" "Eight o'clock, I said. Better not make it later. We'll get married, and not a soul will be any the wiser." "Of course I don't mean it to be a real wedding," said Daisy, blushing violently, "with a tour, and a breakfast, and all that, Frank. We can just go into the church, and go through the ceremony, and come out again at different doors; and I shall walk home here, and you will go back to Dr. Raynor's. Don't you see?" "All right," said Frank. "And if it were not," added Daisy, bursting into a sudden flood of tears, "that it seems to be the only way to prevent our separation, and that mamma must have had some idea we should take it when she said she would wash her hands of me, I wouldn't do such a dreadful thing for the world." Frank Raynor set himself to soothe her, kissing the tears away. A few more minutes given to the details of the plan, an urgent charge on Daisy to keep her courage up, and to be at the church in time, and then they separated.