“While I’m away, do you mean? How fearfully touching! Well, you won’t see much of me for some time now. I mean to go back to Shah Nawaz and see if I can’t do something to cut the ground from under the feet of these fellows who think they’re too good to speak to me. Then I shall be off to Gamara, and when I come back we’ll be married, and my uncle will find me a berth somewhere. Hang it, Penelope! can’t you look pleased? I never saw such a girl for throwing cold water on everything. You know how fond I am of you, and how I want to have a good position to give you, and you don’t care a scrap! I might as well be going to marry a statue.” “I am very sorry,” she said, screwing up her courage for the effort, “but you know how it is. I have asked you to release me, and you refuse.” “Oh, it’s that again, is it? You’re trying to work on my feelings by looking pathetic? Then just understand, once for all, that I won’t release you, and it’s no good trying to drive me to it. You haven’t the least idea what it means to a fellow to be really in love with a girl; but I can tell you this, that I won’t give you up to any man alive--do you hear?--to any man on earth. So you may as well make up your mind to it.” Did he suspect? Penelope could not decide, but she resigned her hope of freedom once more, and allowed him to take her to his uncle, who received her very kindly, and promptly despatched Ferrers to see whether things were nearly ready for the start. “I wanted to say this to you, my dear,” he said, with obvious embarrassment, “that you’ll be wanting to send for pretty things from home, and I should like you to look upon me as your father for the occasion. Young brothers don’t know anything about gowns and fallals, do they?” Penelope looked at him, unable to speak. Pretty things from home for a wedding at which sackcloth and ashes, or the deepest mourning, would be the only wear that could accord with her feelings! The old man misunderstood her look. “There, there! don’t thank me, my dear. I’ll settle it with your friend Lady Haigh, but I thought you might like to know. Pretty gowns for pretty girls, eh? And I’m doing it with an eye to my own advantage, too. Don’t stint yourself in frocks, Miss Pen. I rather want a lady to do the honours down there at Government House. What if I gave George some post that would keep him at Bab-us-Sahel, and you two set up housekeeping with the old man, eh? How would you like that, my dear? Better than the frontier, eh?”