Jos was leaning on the wall, a shawl about her shoulders, her eyes bent on the mill and the Thirty Acres; and her presence in that place on that not too cheerful morning, and her pensive stillness, might have set him wondering, had he given himself time to think. But he was full of his purpose, he viewed her only as she affected it, and he saw nothing except what he wished to see. When, hearing his footsteps, she turned, her color did not rise—and that too might have told him something. But had he spared this a thought, it would only have been to think that her color would rise soon enough when he spoke. “Jos!” he cried, while some paces still separated them. “I’ve seen your father! And I’ve spoken to him!” He waved his hand as one proclaiming a victory. But what victory? Jos was as much in the dark as if he had never paid court to her in those far-off days. “Is anything the matter?” she asked, and she turned as if she would go back to the house. But he barred the way. “Nothing,” he said. “Why should there be? On the contrary, dear. Don’t I tell you that I’ve spoken to the Squire? And he says that I may speak to you.” “To me?” She looked at him candidly, with no inkling in her mind of what he meant. “Yes! My dear girl, don’t you understand? He has given me leave to speak to you—to ask you to be my wife?” And as her lips parted and she gazed at him in astonishment, he took possession of her hand. The position was all in favor of a lover, for the parapet was behind her, and she could not escape if she would; while the ordeal through which he had passed gave this lover an ardor that he might otherwise have lacked. “Jos, dear,” he continued, looking into her eyes, “I’ve waited—waited patiently, knowing that it was useless to speak until he gave me leave. But now”—after all, love-making with that pretty startled face before him, that trembling hand in his, was not unpleasant—“I come to you—for my reward.” “But, Arthur,” she protested, almost too much surprised for words, “I had no idea——” “Come, don’t say that! Don’t say that, Jos dear! No idea? Why, hasn’t it always been this way with us! Since the day that we cut our names on the old pew? Haven’t I seen you blush like a rose when you looked at it—many and many a time? And if I haven’t dared to make love to you of late, surely you have known what was in my mind? Have we not always been meaning this—you and I?” She was thunder-struck. Had it been really so? Could he be right? Had she been blind, and had he been feeling all this while she guessed nothing of it? She looked at him in distress, in increasing distress. “But indeed, indeed,” she said, “I have not been meaning it, Arthur, I have not, indeed!” “Not?” incredulously. “You’ve not known that I——”