“Then do not risk danger again, you are not so much older—only a tender girl of eighteen—widow though you are. I may not even be able to reach you with the poor stay of letters when all your friends will be against me. I cannot wonder and complain, but I must think of myself and my love, and of you and yours, for you love me, and me only, Lady Bell, your lips have sworn it now, over and over.” “Ay, and I swear it again,” averred Lady Bell, with fond pride. “No other man will ever be to you what I can be. I will say more, cross-grained sinner as I am, I honestly believe that I shall raise you, Bell, by your love, as you will raise me by mine. Are not true lovers made for helpmeets as well as mates? And, although I have no cause for boasting, less at this moment perhaps than at any other, still, do you not love me, darling, because you think me honest, though plain, earnest if harsh, a little wiser in my blundering, a little more bent on truth and righteousness in my faultiness, than the ruck of those heartless triflers and blasphemous renouncers of all obligations around you?” “Have I not called you the best of men?” boasted Lady Bell, with an immensity of faith which might have staggered him and opened his eyes. But he only shut them harder, while he modestly declined the innocent hyperbole. “Oh, no, a prodigiously erring fellow, and nearly mad at this moment, I suspect. But we should walk through life hand in hand, love, and ask to rise to the best that nature and grace could make us. For that end we should seek to be reverent and dutiful, and to turn our backs on vanities, follies, and worse. It is not wrong to make this end so sure, that if we live it cannot be baulked, and that no one can ever more come between us to beguile us of our faith in God and each other.” “If I could only claim you as my wife,” he argued unweariedly, “I should have no fear to leave you thus solemnly bound to me—thus able by uttering one word to dismiss all suitors, or to consign them to the tender mercies of a man whom you could then call from the ends of the earth—too happy to come, as I came to you at the masquerade—to give you protection. My name alone, when you choose to take it, and replace by it the name which you tell me, hanging your head (I cannot bear to have my love hang her head), it is no pleasure or pride for you to wear, would protect you.” “Ah! Harry, shall I ever wear your dear name?” “If you will, Lady Bell; and I venture to affirm that it will shelter you as the name of the husband of your own free choice. In the mean time I shall be doing my best to make my name honourable for you. But ah, Bell, grant me my reward now, during the few short hours which we are yet to spend together—while it is in your power to grant it, since it is doubtful whether I shall ever return to claim it.” “Come back quick, Harry, and you may blame me as you will, I shall be too happy to be blamed by you, and to do whatever you desire,” promised Lady Bell.