"It's very easy to talk!" she observed, demurely, "but I was always one that liked to see a man prove his words. If you--you _really_ cared for me, you would do what I ask, wouldn't you, Master Gale? and never want to know the reason why!" "Ask it!" exclaimed the Parson, "and if I say no, beautiful Mistress Nelly, then say no to _me_, when I plead for something dearer and more precious than the light of day and the very air I breathe!" She knew too well the compact implied by so enthusiastic an assent, but hesitated not for a single instant. "You will spare Master Garnet," she said, in a steady, monotonous voice, "and give him time to get clear out of the country, for my--my grandfather's sake." "On one condition!" "On _any_ condition," she murmured, and the brown moors, the evening sky, seemed to spin round so fast that she turned faint and giddy in the whirl. There was no question of deception, no loop-hole for mental reservation and eventual escape. In the balance hung her lover's safety against her own utter destruction. Could there be a doubt into which scale would be flung the deciding weight of a woman's self-sacrificing devotion, a woman's uncalculating love? "You will be my wife, Mistress Nelly Carew, if I pledge myself to let this man go free?" said the Parson, in slow, distinct syllables, while a grin of triumph, none the less hateful for the affection it expressed, rendered his face more hideous than ever in her eyes. "I will be your wife, Master Abner Gale, if you pledge yourself to let this man go free!" she repeated, in clear, incisive tones that seemed the echo of his own. "And you promise never to speak to him nor see him again?" "And I promise never to see him, nor speak to him again!" "It's a bargain." "It's a bargain." Then they shook hands, and although Abner Gale would fain have ratified this strange betrothal with a kiss, there was something in Nelly's face that absolutely cowed him, and he forbore. They soon separated where their respective paths diverged. The Parson made his way over the moor, wondering that he did not feel more elated with his triumph, while Nelly rode home alone, looking into vacancy with a white face and fixed, tearless eyes, that seemed to express neither sorrow nor impatience, nor fear, but only mute wonder, and an uncomplaining, apathetic despair. CHAPTER XXVII. SELF-SACRIFICE.