He uttered this in profound misery, and yet with a firm resolution. Clara turned pale and stared at him with anxious eyes, her lips parted as though to speak, but saying nothing. Knowing his fastidious sense of honor, she guessed the full force with which this scruple weighed upon him, and she did not know how to drag it off his soul. "You are worth a million," he went on, in a broken-hearted sort of voice which to us may seem laughable, but which brought the tears into Clara's eyes. The next instant she brightened; she knew, or thought she knew, that she was not worth a million; so she smiled like a sunburst and caught him gayly by the wrists. "A million!" she scoffed, laughingly. "Do you believe all Coronado tells you?" "What! isn't it true?" exclaimed Thurstane, reddening with joy. "Then you are not heir to your grandfather's fortune? It was one of _his_ lies? Oh, my little girl, I am forever happy." She had not meant all this; but how could she undeceive him? The tempting thought came into her mind that she would marry him while he was in this ignorance, and so relieve him of his noble scruples about taking an heiress. It was one of those white lies which, it seems to us, must fade out of themselves from the record book, without even needing to be blotted by the tear of an angel. "Are you glad?" she smiled, though anxious at heart, for deception alarmed her. "Really glad to find me poor?" His only response was to cover her hands, and hair, and forehead with kisses. At last came the question, When? Clara hesitated; her face and neck bloomed with blushes as dewy as flowers; she looked at him once piteously, and then her gaze fell in beautiful shame. "When would you like?" she at last found breath to whisper. "Now--here," was the answer, holding both her hands and begging with his blue-black eyes, as soft then as a woman's. "Yes, at once," he continued to implore. "It is best everyway. It will save you from persecutions. My love, is it not best?" Under the circumstances we cannot wonder that this should be just as she desired. "Yes--it is--best," she murmured, hiding her face against his shoulder. "What you say is true. It will save me trouble." After a short heaven of silence he added, "I will go and see what is needed. I must find a priest." As he was departing she caught him; it seemed to her just then that she could not be a wife so soon; but the result was that after another silence and a faint sobbing, she let him go.