In spite of his gay manner, there is no doubt he was in earnest in his offer to Bess. ‘You’ll keep me steady,’ he went on, in reply to her remonstrances. ‘I’m a ship without a rudder now, and I might drift on to the rocks. You’ll keep me straight for port. I know you will, little woman.’ ‘But, George, think of your friends.’ ‘I have no friends. From this day I’m George Smith, and you shall be Mrs. Smith. I’ll get something to do in the City, and earn my dinner before I eat it. It’ll be quite a romance.’ George rubbed his hands. He was already in imagination bringing home his golden salary on Saturday, and flinging it into Bess’s lap. Many idle words he said that evening, and many serious ones, but the upshot of it all was that he went off to town to look for quiet furnished apartments in which they could start housekeeping, and to buy a licence to marry Bess Marks. And Bess went back to the lodge, half broken-hearted and half mad with delight, to cry on her father’s neck and keep the big secret that her lips were dying to utter. And all supper-time she sat and looked at him and wondered what he would do when she was gone, and what he would think of her. George had told her that her father must not know they were married—‘Not for a little while, darling,’ he said. He thought if the lodge-keeper knew it, the faithful old servant would not be able to keep the news long from his master. George Heritage had made up his mind to marry Bess Marks, but he couldn’t quite screw his courage up to the point of having his _mésalliance_ proclaimed. That he put off to ‘some day.’ On the following morning, while Bess was sitting by the open window thinking of her sweetheart and talking to her father, answering at random, and dropping furtive little tears on to her needlework, George was roaming about London looking for furnished apartments suitable for a young couple with limited means. After trying a few dozen houses where cards were exhibited in the windows, and finding everything that he did _not_ want, such as musical societies, religious families, new babies on each floor, and high rents and low ceilings, he came to a little house in a street at Dalston, in the front window of which hung a card, and on the card was written ‘First floor to let furnished. Apply within.’ George applied, and the rooms just suited him. Sixteen shillings a week was not dear, certainly, for a bedroom and sitting-room; and though the landlady seemed a little starchy and inclined to be acidulated, she was very clean and respectable-looking. That evening when Mr. Jabez Duck returned from the City, Miss Georgina informed him that she’d let the first floor—no references, but rent a week in advance—to a Mr. and Mrs. George Smith, a newly married couple. ‘What are they like?’ ‘I don’t know,’ answered Georgina, tartly; ‘I’ve only seen the gentleman at present, and he _is_ a gentleman.’