"I think you must know, for he told me he was going to speak to you and his father. My life is quite miserable enough, and I don't want it made worse. It will be much worse if he comes to see me when he returns, and says he is the same as ever, and you are the same as ever. I promise I won't see him again, if he leaves me alone, and I won't marry him without your consent. Does he really love me, Mrs. Bellamie?" "Yes, my dear," the lady whispered. "Do you think that is the carriage?" "It is only the wind. Well, I know he does, but I wanted to hear you say it. What am I to do when he comes home? He will ask me to meet him, and if I refuse he will come up here and want to kiss me. What am I to do? I love him. I have loved him since I was a small child. I am not going to tell him I don't love him to please you or any one. I have done a good deal. I will not do that." "We will beg him not to come and trouble you," said the lady. "But if he does come?" "I think, my dear, it will be best for all of us if you ask him not to come again." That was too much for the little girl. She could hardly be expected to enter into an alliance with Aubrey's parents against herself. She began to breathe quickly, and there was plenty of colour in her cheeks as she replied: "I shall do nothing of the kind. How can you expect me to tell him to go away, and leave me, when I love him? I have got little enough, and only one thing that makes me happy, and you want me to deprive myself of that one thing. If you can deprive me of it you may. But I am not going to torture myself. I have made my promise, and that is all that can be expected from me. Were you never in love when you were eighteen?" The lady rather thought that at the susceptible age mentioned she fell in love with every one, though the disease was only taken in a mild form and was never dangerous. She had a distinct recollection of falling violently in love with a choir boy, who sang like an angel and looked like one, but she had never spoken to him because he was only the baker's son. She had been rather more than twenty when Mr. Bellamie had fallen in love with her blood, and she had been advised to fall in love with his. She had been quite happy, she loved her husband in a restful kind of way, but of the intense passion which lights up the whole universe with one face and form she knew nothing; she hardly believed that such love existed outside fairy-tales; and in her heart she thought it scarcely decent. She had never kissed her husband before marrying him, and she was very much shocked to think that her son had been kissing Boodles. She would have been still more shocked had she seen them together. She would have regarded their conduct as grossly immoral, when it was actually the purest thing on earth. There is nothing cleaner than a flame of fire.