“Not yet! not yet!” besought Lady Bell, dislodged from her poor little temporary cranny of arch resistance and coquettish teasing, and stretched anew, like another Andromeda, on a sheer precipice, over a sea of misery, until she fell back into her lamentation. “If we had but understood each other faster, and been married within these few weeks—sailors and soldiers must woo and wed in haste—before these terrible sailing orders arrived! Then I could have sailed with you; I should not have been frighted, though we had encountered the enemy. I could have kept quiet below, with you on deck to run to when the guns ceased firing. I might have proved how little I cared for any other man by following you all over the world.” “You can prove it, dear,” declared Harry Fane, hoarse with eagerness, taking her at her word, giving the reins to his passion, and smothering and trampling down every doubt and scruple. “Let us be married before I go, and although I cannot take you with me, I may send for you to my station. Some one of my old messmates and friends will be glad to do as he would be done by, and bring you out to me in his ship.” Lady Bell was astounded; she had been utterly unprepared for this catching up of her speech, heartfelt though it was. Harry Fane rushed on, overwhelming her with his special pleading. “That and that alone would reassure my mind, which is on the rack for you, exposed on a pinnacle as you are. Don’t be vexed with me when I say it, but you are a beautiful woman of rank, very young, greatly admired, as you well may be, moving in gay worldly circles, which unsettle even a man’s head, and throw dust in his eyes. You have not a near relation whose right it would be to control and guide you, only such thoughtless, irresponsible guardians as even my good cousin! Oh! my love, how shall I leave you thus? for God knows how long,” he groaned in anguish, “these six—twelve years. This horrid war has long been hanging over us. Our American brethren are brave and resolute as we are; the strife may last while mother country and colony hold out. How can I trust your constancy exposed to such a test, assailed as it will be when I am gone, and you a young woman, and therefore weak, without blame or shame to you?” “I understand,” acknowledged Lady Bell piteously. “I am not angry with you for distrusting me—how can I be, when I remember how weak I was once before? How wrong as well as weak, I know by my love for you. I was unfair to myself and to another. Do I not shrink from looking you and every one in the face when I think of my marriage? Do I not blush for the name I bear, because of the reason for bearing it?—that I let myself be sold as a chattel or a slave, rather than die free—and I was not a loyal slave, Harry, never think it; I revolted and fled, like many another slave.” He was hardly listening to her, he was so dead set on over-persuading her and himself that he might make her his, and that by doing so, he would save her.