Thinking that the wind has carried away his words, he repeats his question: "At the end of three weeks you will come to us, then?" She turns her head round slowly. "Could not I live in some hovel by myself?" He shakes his head. "Impossible! You see," he says, speaking with slow reluctance, "he--poor dear fellow!--laid out a great deal of money on all the latest improvements in farming implements, and things of that kind, and they did not bring him anything back; they would have done, no doubt, if he had been given time," he adds, quickly, afraid of seeming to cast the faintest slur upon the dead boy. "You mean to say that I have no money--that I am a beggar," she says, fixing her clear, steadfast eyes upon him: and in them is none of that dismay which her words seem to imply. "I mean to say," he answers, heartily, "that henceforth you are to be one of us, and that we are very, _very_ glad of it." She does not say "Thank you;" she neither assents nor refuses; she only looks away, and watches the distant trees tossing violent arms, in riotous fight with the wind. Something in her manner makes Brandon uneasy. "It is agreed, then?" he asks, eagerly. No reply. "Why don't you answer me, Esther?" (with a slight natural impatience in his tone). She turns her face slowly round towards him--a face paled by her late agonies, thinned by long fastings, and by thousands of great tears. "Because," she replies, "I have one friend in the world now; and when I have answered you, I shall have none!" "What _do_ you mean?" "If I were to come to you, I should come as your supposed future wife, shouldn't I? Well, I should be an impostor." A great sickening fear whitens his brown face, but he contains himself, and speaks quietly: "Do you think I meant to _bargain_ with you? Do you think I meant to make a profit for myself out of your troubles? What have I ever done to make you think me so mean?" he asks, reproachfully. She draws a heavy sighing breath. "Why am I beating about the bush?" she says, chiding herself; "it must out, sooner or later! Oh, Bob! Bob! if I had it in me to be sorry about anything, I should be sorry about this!" "About what?" he asks, cruelly excited. "Look this way, Esther. Is it--is it what I have been afraid of all along?" Her head sinks in shamed dejection on her breast. "Yes, it is," she answers, faintly. There will be a great storm at sea to-night; the gulls are circling about, calling wildly to one another--here, twenty miles inland. "Who is it?" asks Bob, in a husky whisper, presently. She sighs again, profoundly. "Do you remember," she says, "before I went to the Gerards'--how many hundred years ago was that?--your saying one day that you wished they had not got a son, and my laughing at you about it? Well! you were right!--it is he!" Brandon turns away his head, speaks not, nor gives any sign. It is in silence that a good brave man meetliest takes his deathblow.