“_6th._ Another day, and I am still here. I was awake all last night, thinking of all manner of possibilities, or perhaps impossibilities. The yellow post-chaise and the college friend in a surplice are obsolete absurdities; but how about a marriage before the Registrar? Is there anything so very impossible in a marriage before the Registrar, which shall not be, say, _too_ binding? Why not a marriage before the Registrar, between eight and twelve in the forenoon, with open doors, in the presence of two witnesses, &c.? You walk into an office, very much like any other office, and you see an official very much like any other official, and there is a trifling formula, and a little signing and countersigning, and so on, and the business is done. But even about this there would be a good deal of trouble, and the college friend would still be necessary, though not in a surplice--and the witnesses--and the office. _Is_ the game worth the candle? Am I really so desperately in love? And then, again, supposing the game worth the cost of illumination, these sort of games are so apt to be dangerous; and awkward stories crop up against one in after-life; with perhaps Chancery suits, and so forth. No, it is too much trouble. It will be better for Susan and I to shake hands, like sensible people, and say Good-bye. “_7th._--A very long talk with Susan. I told her that we must part; our roads in life lying separate, and so on. Poor child! her grief was something very terrible. We had wandered out to some lonely ground beyond the Esplanade, leaving those abominable children to disport themselves as they pleased. We sat down upon a little bank at the edge of a great ploughed field, with the grey sea before us. The poor child sobbed as if her heart would have broken. I am no deliberate Lovelace, but I suppose I have in this instance pursued the prey with something of a Mexican trapper’s intensity. I never meant to be in earnest; but have been drifted, as it were, by the chances of the situation; and people who let lodgings at dull watering-places really should not employ such pretty parlour-maids. Poor, tender-hearted little Susy! I never thought she could have grown so fond of me, or that a little sentimental spouting, and a few pretty speeches, could have gone so far. I should have been a callous wretch if I had not been touched by her grief; and I was inexpressibly touched; so much so that I flung all good resolutions to swell the general heap of paving material for the halls of Pluto, and told my Susy that there was an alternative for this miserable parting if she would--trust me--and consent to a marriage before the Registrar. “She will trust me. I explained to her the nature of the ceremonial I proposed, and how all unnecessary publicity and the ruin of my prospects might be avoided thereby. And then the poor little thing burst out with a whole string of romantic protestations.