Both men had their eyes fixed on my face when I looked up, as I finished reading the note. "Lady Katherine Montgomerie writes to ask me to Tryland," I said. "So if you will excuse me I will answer it, and say I will come this afternoon," and I got up. Mr. Carruthers rose, too, and followed me into the library. He deliberately shut the door and came over to the writing-table where I sat down. "Well, if I let you go, will you tell her then that you are engaged to me, and I am going to marry you as soon as possible?" "No, indeed I won't," I said, decidedly. "I am not going to marry you, or any one, Mr. Carruthers. What do you think of me? Fancy my consenting to come back here forever, and live with you, when I don't know you a bit! And having to put up with your--perhaps--kissing me, and--and--things of that sort. It is perfectly dreadful to think of!" He laughed as if in spite of himself. "But supposing I promised not to kiss you?" "Even so," I said, and I couldn't help biting the end of my pen. "It could happen that I might get a feeling I wanted to kiss some one else--and there it is! Once you're married, everything nice is wrong!" "Evangeline! I won't let you go--out of my life--you strange little witch! You have upset me, disturbed me--I can settle to nothing. I seem to want you so very much." "Pouf!" I said, and I pouted at him. "You have everything in your life to fill it--position, riches, friends. You don't want a green-eyed adventuress." I bent down and wrote steadily to Lady Katherine. I would be there about six o'clock, I said, and thanked her in my best style. "If I let you go, it is only for the time," Mr. Carruthers said as I signed my name. "I _intend_ you to marry me--do you hear?" "Again I say, 'Qui vivre verra!'" I laughed and rose with the note in my hand. Lord Robert looked almost ready to cry when I told him I was off in the afternoon. "I shall see you again," he said. "Lady Katherine is a relation of my aunt's husband, Lord Merrenden. I don't know her myself, though." I do not believe him. How can he see me again? Young men do talk a lot of nonsense! "I shall come over on Wednesday to see how you are getting on," Mr. Carruthers said. "Please do be in." I promised I would, and then I came up-stairs. And so it has come to an end, my life at Branches. I am going to start a new phase of existence, my first beginning as an adventuress!