Here was meekness! Had she boxed his ears again, it would have surprised him not at all. Indeed, it is what he had looked for. But that she should be stricken so spiritless, that she should have no reproof for him beyond that plaintive question, left him agape with amazement. It occurred to him that perhaps he had found the way to tame her; and he regretted on every count that he should not have had recourse before to a method so entirely satisfactory to himself. Meanwhile her question craved an answer. “I’ve been wanting to do it this twelvemonth,” said he simply. “And I shall want to do it again. Nan, dear, don’t you know how much I love you? Don’t you know without my telling you? Don’t you?” The fervent question chased away her trouble and summoned surprise to fill its place. A moment she stared at him, and her glance hardened. She began to show signs of recovery. “The declaration should have preceded the ... the ... affront.” “Affront!” he cried, in protest. “What else? Isn’t it an affront to kiss a maid without a by-your-leave? If you were a man, I shouldn’t forgive you. I couldn’t. But as you’re just a boy”--her tone soared to disdainful heights--“you shall be forgiven on a promise that the offence is not to be repeated.” “But I love you, Nan! I’ve said so,” he expostulated. “You’re too precocious, young Randal. It comes, I suppose, of being given a sword to play with. I shall have to speak to your father about it. You need manners more than a sword at present.” The minx was skilled in the art of punishing. But the lad refused to be put out of countenance. “Nan, dear, I am asking you to marry me.” She jumped at that. Her eyes dilated. “Lord!” she said. “What condescension! But d’you think I want a child tied to my apron-strings?” “Won’t you be serious, Nan?” he pleaded. “I am very serious.” “You must be, to be thinking of marriage.” “I am going away, Nan--to-morrow, very early. I came to say good-bye.” Her eyelids flickered, and in that moment a discerning glance would have detected a gleam of alarm from her blue eyes. But there was no hint of it in her voice. “I thought you said it was to marry me you came.” “Why will you be teasing me? It means so much to me, Nan. I want you to say that you’ll wait for me; that you’ll marry me some day.” He was very close to her. She looked up at him a little breathlessly. Her feminine intuitions warned her that he was about to take a liberty; feminine perversity prompted her to frustrate the intention, although it was one that in her heart she knew would gladden her. “Some day?” she mocked him. “When you’re grown up, I suppose? Why, I’ll be an old maid by then; and I don’t think I want to be an old maid.” “Answer me, Nan. Don’t rally me. Say that you’ll wait.” He would have caught her by the shoulders again. But she eluded those eager hands of his. “You haven’t told me yet where you are going.”