In the errand in relation to the costumes, the young people found themselves unexpectedly delayed; so that the short October twilight was already falling when they drove out of Samoset. By the time Wilk's Run was reached, it was so dark, that, in the shadow of the carriage-top, their faces were not visible to each other. As the gloom deepened, the courage of the young man increased; and when at length he could not see the eyes of his companion, he was able to speak the words which had all the afternoon been jostling each other in eagerness to obtain utterance. Unabashed with all others, Clarence found in Patty's clear glances a penetration against the embarrassment of which he strove in vain; but, that removed, he spoke. "It may seem strange for me to say it," he began; "but I've quite made up my mind that we should get along nicely together." "Have you?" she returned, laughing, but secretly uneasy. "We have never quarrelled, that I remember." "Oh, no!" he answered, "of course not. I hope you don't think so meanly of me as to believe I'd quarrel with you." "No," she said, smiling to herself; "but I might have quarrelled with you." "I didn't mean that," said he. "But we get on so nicely together, that, I say, why shouldn't we be always together, you know?" He could hardly have chosen a more unfortunate phrase in which to couch his proposal. There came over his companion a sickening sense of what it would be to live always with the man at her side. He attempted to embrace her with the arm not occupied with the reins; but she shrank back into the farthest corner of the carriage, filled with the bitterest self-contempt because she listened to him. This self-reproach was his salvation. The sense of her own weakness in letting him declare his passion, and of her dishonesty in keeping a silence which he might interpret favorably, so overwhelmed her with detestation for herself, that by contrast she for the moment almost regarded Clarence as an injured angel of honesty and devotion. From this odd mingling of feelings arose a sort of pity for her suitor; and, although she answered nothing, she suffered him to say on. "I love you," he continued, "and I should be a fool if I didn't know that I have something to offer the girl who marries me." "If I ever married," Patty answered in a constrained voice, "I shouldn't marry for what a man could give me." "If that is true," she added to herself, "why am I listening to him at all? Oh, what a hypocrite I am!" "Of course not," Toxteth said, answering the remark he heard. "But a man is no worse for having a few dollars, is he?" "I suppose not." "Then, why do you not say that you will marry me?" he demanded almost petulantly. "I was not aware that you had asked me." "I have, then. Will you?" "I cannot tell," she said. "I cannot tell. Don't ask me to say more now." "I must say," he retorted, rather offended, "that I can't be very much flattered by the way you talk."