"You are too young—only seventeen! Far too young for an old fellow like me. Yes, I am old compared with you, my child! The discrepancy is far too great. It would be wrong! You are such a child. You cannot know your own mind yet. Still I could give love as strong—stronger, I think, than any mere boy. I do give—but how can I ask your acceptance? It would be a cruelty to your future." She gazed wistfully into his agitated face. "I don't quite understand," she repeated. "At least I am not sure. But you are the best and kindest friend I have ever had. Nobody can be to me what you are. And I am not a child. I am just eighteen. I have not been a child for years. They said at school that I grew into a woman long before the right time. I don't care for young people or boys. There is always a want in them. Why should you talk as if there were such a very great difference between you and me? I think age has more to do with mind than body." The words dropped slowly from her soft rosy lips, each with an intonation of serious thought. General Villiers was swept away by them. He took her hands into his own, kissing again and again the slender fingers. "My little girl! Can it be true? Will you be mine? Could you make up your mind to marry me, my Evelyn—to let my home be yours?" "Marry you! Live at Dutton Park!" And her eyes opened wider. Despite her would-be middle-aged manner, she looked inordinately young at that moment, her ivory skin and delicate bloom contrasting with his grizzled locks and developing crow's feet. The innocent surprise was so like a child's pleasure. "Live at Dutton Park!" she said. She did not add—"Get away from aunt Sybella!"—but unquestionably that idea was prominent. "Would you? Could you? Do you feel that it would be possible?" faltered the General. He could hardly speak, he was so stirred and shaken by the rush of his great love; while she was entirely calm, only surprised and pleased. "My Evelyn! My darling can such joy be?" "Yes, I will indeed," she answered. CHAPTER VII. PREPOSTEROUS! "What can a young lassie, what shall a young lassie, What can a young lassie do wi' an auld man?" R. BURNS. "I NEVER heard anything so preposterous in all my life!" declared Madame Collier, in a muffled tone of righteous indignation. The muffled sound was due to a physical cause, not to a mental condition. Madame Collier was putting a false hem to an old serge skirt of Jean's for lengthening purposes; and the process required a plentiful use of pins. Two or three white points protruded from each corner of her mouth. She wore her huge untrimmed garden hat, having been previously fruit-gathering; and the rusty alpaca was looped up, Dutchwoman-wise, nearly half-way to her knees, displaying ankles formed rather for strength than grace.