“Don’t excite yourself, my dear,” said Mrs Hagopidan, swiftly descending the stairs to the landing, and sitting down on the lowest step. “I said I was a kind and amiable friend, and I’m going to be. No one shall interrupt you, I promise, and if any one tries to pass, it will be over my body. Now, Dr Egerton, use your opportunity. Go over to the other side of the roof, and I shan’t hear. You may count on me to keep a good look-out.” “I don’t like being entrapped, Dr Egerton,” said Cecil. “I think I will ask you to take me back to Lady Haigh.” “I don’t think you will,” said Charlie, quickly, “when you remember how long I have been waiting for this talk with you, and how hard it has been for me to get back here even now. I can trust you not to keep me longer in suspense. Whatever my fate is, at least you will let me know it at once.” This was reasonable enough, and Cecil could not withstand the appeal to her sense of fairness. She walked across to the other side of the roof, and sat down upon the wide parapet, looking at the shadowy garden beneath, and at the river beyond, its broad surface flecked with many wavering lights. Behind was the courtyard, partially illuminated by the beams from the lighted windows of the drawing-room, and farther still the town, with its winding, badly-lighted streets, and its ghostly minarets and palm-trees. The strains of music floated up to her, mingled with the more distant sounds of the city, but no human being was visible anywhere, and it seemed as if the world held only herself and Charlie. He was standing beside her, apparently finding some difficulty in framing what he wanted to say. “I’ve longed to speak to you for years,” he burst out at last, “and now that I have the opportunity I feel ashamed to use it, because I know my speaking to you at all must seem to you such arrant cheek. I have thought about it pretty often in the last week, and upon my word! I can’t think of any conceivable earthly reason why you should marry me, except that I love you.” He stopped, and then went on somewhat more freely. “Cousin Elma has told you how I wanted to speak to you two years ago, and why I didn’t. That’s the reason, Cecil. It was because I loved you, and I didn’t want to get you into trouble, and I have learned to love you more and more since. I do love you, dear, and I have tried to be a better man for your sake. I can’t talk much about that sort of thing, you know, but I do see things more in the way you do than when we first met. But I can’t say it as I should like,” he broke off despairingly. “Whatever I say seems only to show me more and more how utterly presumptuous I am. I know I could never hope that you could care for me as I care for you, because I am such a wretched failure of a fellow, but if you could love me just a little--if you could take me on--well, just as a sort of pupil, you know--but I don’t mean that at all. Will you marry me, Cecil?”