"I am glad to see you, Mr. Rowan." "Mr. Rowan! Nay; if it is to be Mr. Rowan I may as well go back to Baslehurst. It has come to that, that it must be Luke now, or there must be no naming of names between us. You chided me once when I called you Rachel." "You called me so once, sir, when I should have chided you and did not. I remember it well. You were very wrong, and I was very foolish." "But I may call you Rachel now?" Then, when she did not answer him at the moment, he asked the question again in that imperious way which was common with him. "May I not call you now as I please? If it be not so my coming here is useless. Come, Rachel, say one word to me boldly. Do you love me well enough to be my wife?" She was standing at the open window, looking away from him, while he remained at a little distance from her as though he would not come close to her till he had exacted from her some positive assurance of her love as a penance for the fault committed by her letter. He certainly was not a soft lover, nor by any means inclined to abate his own privileges. He paused a moment as though he thought that his last question must elicit a plain reply. But no reply to it came. She still looked away from him through the window, as though resolved that she would not speak till his mood should have become more tender. "You said something in your letter," he continued, "about my affairs here in Baslehurst being unsettled. I would not show myself here again till that matter was arranged." "It was not I," she said, turning sharply round upon him. "It was not I who thought that." "It was in your letter, Rachel." "Do you know so little of a girl like me as to suppose that what was written there came from me, myself? Did I not tell you that I said what I was told to say? Did I not explain to you that mamma had gone to Mr. Comfort? Did you not know that all that had come from him?" "I only know that I read it in your letter to me,--the only letter you had ever written to me." "You are unfair to me, Mr. Rowan. You know that you are unfair." "Call me Luke," he said. "Call me by my own name." "Luke," she said, "you are unfair to me." "Then by heavens it shall be for the last time. May things in this world and the next go well with me as I am fair to you for the future!" So saying he came up close to her, and took her at once in his arms. "Luke, Luke; don't. You frighten me; indeed you do." "You shall give me a fair open kiss, honestly, before I leave you,--in truth you shall. If you love me, and wish to be my wife, and intend me to understand that you and I are now pledged to each other beyond the power of any person to separate us by his advice, or any mother by her fears, give me a bold, honest kiss, and I will understand that it means all that."