“May I go a little way with you, Pamela dear?” “There now! If that isn’t a gentleman all over, and me having only just re-established my character! A-waiting for me again outside Madame Mirabel’s, with goodness gracious knows how many cats’ eyes a-spying on me from behind the shutters!” Something about the girl’s gay courage, her sane, bright outlook on life, touched him at a spot already exceedingly vulnerable. Anyone else, he thought, would be having the vapours over this afternoon’s work; reproaching, weeping, lost in self-pity and recrimination. He reflected, too, how it might have been, had she listened to him one winter’s evening, and one summer’s day. A girl in a thousand! His mind had been already made up, but he ratified the inner decision with an ardent leap of the heart. They went on side by side, till they reached the Park, and then she remembered again, how, a few yards away, nearly two years ago, she had snatched a pistol from him. He stopped her, and spoke. “Pamela, I asked you to give me your hand to-day. I ask you again to be my wife. Oh, when I saw you stand with the little dark child in your arms, which they thought was ours, I vowed you were the one woman in the world for me! Oh, I have been a base wretch! I owe you money, I owe you my honour. I owe you my life. I owe you something more worth than all these; the only real, the only pure love I have ever known. Pamela! You’ll make a man of me yet, if you’ll have me.” She had once been shaken, flattered by his attentions; had looked up at him as a being, splendid, dashing, gallant, altogether out of her sphere. When he had courted her, it was as if a god had stooped. But this evening he was something quite different to her: a weak, wild youth whom her love might steady; a spendthrift, a gambler, an amiable prodigal for whom she might prepare the fatted calf, whom her ring might bind to home; one, in fine, who had need of her. It was the mother in her who smiled on him now with wet eyes. Under a high moon, and a sky full of stars they presently discussed plans that seemed to Pamela to combine the bliss of Eden with the practicality of a work-a-day world. “I’ll not give up my business, sir! I’ll never pretend to be other than I am. No false lady airs for me!” “You wouldn’t be Pamela if there were. You shall do exactly what you like! But I’m going to work too. Indeed, my dearest girl, I will! And we’ll have that cottage somewhere in the green, not too far but what you can get the coach of a morning.” “Oh,” cried Pamela, clasping her hands and laughing. “I’ll have roses in the garden, and sit out of a Sunday in a pink muslin dress with flounces!” CHAPTER XIII IN WHICH MY LADY KILCRONEY MAKES AN INDELICATE FUSS