"Oh yes, of course," he said mockingly, when he had found his breath. "Lord Ruddington, _alias_ the King of Spain, alias the Emperor of Russia! Of course!" "Honour bright, it’s true!" said Susan indignantly. "If it isn’t, may I be struck down dead. His lordship fell over his head in love with me in Traxelby church." "Susie, this is true?" he demanded, striding up to her and speaking fiercely. "This is true?" "Don’t go on silly," said Susan. Gibson leaned against a tree and thought for some time. At last he straightened himself up, and said, in low excited tones: "Look here, Susie, this makes a difference. You don’t think I’m going to help you miss a chance like that? Haven’t I always said you’re fit to be a duchess? No, Susie, it isn’t good enough. D’ye think I’m going to let you throw yourself away on a poor thirty-bob-a-week devil like me?" "Oh don’t, Tom, don’t!" she pleaded, clinging to him again. "Don’t! or you’ll make me change my mind." "There isn’t a finer gentleman in all England nor Lord Ruddington," said Gibson. "Oh don’t!" wailed Susan again. "What is the matter with him?" demanded Gibson. "It isn’t his money. No, nor his horses. Perhaps it’s his looks?" "We’d better be going!" I whispered to Ruddington, behind our bush. "No, no," protested Susan, "it isn’t his looks. When I put him in that folding frame, facing Miss Langley, they looked lovely--just like Royalty. No, it isn’t his looks. I could put up with that." "Then what is it you can’t put up with?" asked Gibson searchingly. She scraped the ground with her foot, as she used to scrape the garden gravel, before she replied mysteriously: "Tom, he’s so funny. He’s all twists and turns. It’d be like being married to an eel. If he’s the same as his letters, he’d make me all giddy. When I read them, everything seems to begin turning and turning round." Gibson snorted impatiently. "With a thousand pound a week," he said ironically, "you’ll soon get used to that." "Tom, don’t, don’t!" she cried. "How can you be so cruel? If you cared about me as you said you did, you wouldn’t let nobody have me but you--not if it was the Prince of Wales crawling on his bended knees." Gibson came more into the light. I could read in his face the bitterness of his heart. "Susie," he said, "what’s the use of talking? If I take you away to-night, you know you’ll have to marry me, even if you change your mind before to-morrow morning. Unless there’s some good reason why you won’t marry Lord Ruddington, you’ll repent of it when we’re poor and when we’ve to work hard for a living. You’ll throw it in my teeth, and we shall be worse’n a cat and a dog." I was amazed at Gibson’s paltriness; amazed and angry. But not for long. All at once my groom drew himself up as grandly as a knight of romance, and demanded: "Susie, girl--isn’t there a better reason?" My maid was his equal.