"If you do not wish to break my heart, Dove, don’t talk like that," he said, beside himself with despair and remorse. "See, give me your hand, and I’ll tell you all about it. Turn your eyes to me, dearest. We are a little changed, I know; but what does it matter? So soon as ever we can, we shall marry, Dove; and then the old confidence will come back again. I have been away so much from you that we have lost our old familiarity; but when we are married, you know——" Then she turned, and the beautiful violet eyes were once more reading his face. "You _wish_ us to be married, Will?" "My darling, I do," he said eagerly, honestly, joyously—for in the mere thought that thereby he _might_ make some reparation there lay peace and assurance for the future. "I wish that we could be married to-morrow morning." She pressed his hand and lay back on the cushion with a sigh. There was a pale, wan pleasure in her face, and a satisfied languor in her eyes. "I think I shall make a very good wife," she said, a little while after, with the old smile on her face. "But I shall have to be petted, and cared for, and spoiled, just as before. I don’t think I should wish to be treated differently if I knew you were frank with me, and explained your griefs to me, and so on. I wished, darling, to be older, and out of this spoiling, because I thought you considered me such a baby——" "You will be no longer a baby when you are married. Think of yourself as a married woman, Dove—the importance you will have, the dignity you will assume. Think of yourself presiding over your own tea-table—think of yourself choosing a house down near Hastings, and making wonderful arrangements with the milkman, and the butcher; and getting into a terrible rage when they forget your orders, and blaming all their negligence on me." "My dear, I don’t think I shall have anything to do with butchers and milkmen." "Why?" "Because I don’t think you will ever have any money to pay them with." "So long as I have only one arm with which to work for you, Dove, you must learn to live on little; but still——" "I shall not want much, shall I, if I have you beside me to make me forget that I am hungry? But it all looks like a dream, just like what is past. Are they both dreams, dearest? Were those real times down in the old house, when you and I used to sit together, or walk out together, over the common, you know, and over the bridge by the mill-head, and away over the meadows down by that strip of wood, and so on, and so on, until we came to the river again, and the road, and Balnacluith House, and the deer-park? How pleasant it was, in the summer evenings; but that seems so long ago!" "How sad you have been these last few days, Dove!"