While they were father-and-mother-ing Lucian in Paris, Saxonstowe had remained solid and grim as one of the Old Guard, doing nothing but his duty. Sprats had watched him with keen observation, and had admired his stern determination and the earnest way in which he did everything. He had taken hold of Lucian as a big brother might take a little one, and had been gentle and firm, kindly and tactful, all at once. She had often longed to throw her arms round him and kiss him for his good-boy qualities, but he had sunk the lover in the friend with unmistakable purpose, and she was afraid of him. She began to catch herself looking at him out of her eye-corners when he was not looking at her, and she hated herself. Once when he came suddenly into a room, she blushed so furiously that she could have cried with vexation, and it was all the more aggravating, she said, because she had just happened to be thinking of him. Travelling back together, she was very subdued and essentially feminine. Her manner invited confidence, but Saxonstowe was stiff as a ramrod and cold as an icicle. He put her into a hansom at Charing Cross, and bade her good-bye as if she had been a mere acquaintance. But he came to her the next afternoon, and she knew from his face that he was in an urgent and a masterful mood. She recognised that she would have to capitulate, and had a happy moment in assuring herself that she would make her own terms. Saxonstowe wasted no time. He might have been a smart young man calling to collect the water-rate. ‘The night that we went to Paris together,’ he said, ‘you made an observation which you thought I understood. I didn’t understand it, and now I want to know what you meant.’ ‘What I said. That we were going--you and I--together,’ she answered. ‘But what _did_ that mean?’ ‘Together,’ she said, ‘together means--well, of course, it means--together.’ Saxonstowe put his hands on her shoulders; she immediately began to study the pattern of the hearthrug at their feet. ‘Will you marry me, Millicent?’ he said. She nodded her head, but her eyes still remained fixed on his toes. ‘Answer me,’ he commanded. ‘Yes,’ she said, and lifted her eyes to his. A moment later she disengaged herself from his arms and began to laugh. ‘I was going to extract such a lot of conditions,’ she said. ‘Somehow I don’t care about them now. But will you tell me just what is going to happen?’ ‘You knew, I suppose, that I should have already mapped everything out. Well, so I have. We shall be married at once, in the quietest possible fashion, and then we are going round the world in our own way. It is to be your holiday after all these years of work.’ She nodded, with perfect acquiescence in his plans. ‘At once?’ she said questioningly. ‘A week from to-day,’ he said. The notion of such precipitancy brought the blood into her face.