"So wore on the daylight hours. Dusk came early, and after the lamps were lit first one and then the other of my girls wrapped herself in her shawl, and cuddling together on one seat with the head of each on the other's shoulders, they both dropped asleep. He and I were now sitting side by side. For a long time neither spoke. I persistently stared out of the window at the flying landscape, almost invisible now in the increasing darkness; but I could feel, though I did not even glance at him, that he had turned in his seat, his elbow resting on the back of it, his cheek on his hand and his eyes on me. At length he bent over toward me, and in so low a tone of voice that the girls could scarce have heard it had they been awake he whispered, 'Will you permit me to say a few words to you?' "'I have no objection,' I answered coldly--'always with the proviso that what you have to say to me is something which it will be no derogation of my dignity as a mother of grown daughters to hear.' "'Could you, madam, for a moment believe me capable of saying anything unworthy you, unworthy myself?' he exclaimed reproachfully. 'Oh no: I do not think I have given you any cause to believe me other than a gentleman. I am not in search of a love-affair, believe me, nor have I hitherto been considered as at all of an impressionable nature. I am perhaps not quite so young as I look, and certainly the opportunity of meeting beautiful and fascinating women has not been lacking to me. I know scores of such, and still I have borne hitherto an unoccupied heart. Now, I -- But I am tongue-tied: I fear to give offence. I know very well you would not let me tell you that you have inspired in me one of those passions which, born in an instant, often shape a whole destiny--that I love you as fondly as a man ever loved a woman. No, no, do not stop me. I say that I do _not_ make such assertions, because I know you would not allow me; but there is one thing I will make bold to do--one favor I must crave at your hands. Will you grant it?' "'What is it?' "'This: that you will let me count myself among your friends. Give me that foothold, and something I feel here in my innermost heart tells me that by it I may lift myself to a niche in yours which no other man now fills. Let time try the sincerity of what I say. All I ask of you is that if I ever come to Hurville (as I surely shall if I'm alive), you will allow me to call upon you merely as a friend: I ask no more.' "'Are you sincere in this wish?'