“Oh!” said Penelope; then, as his meaning dawned upon her. “I didn’t think you could have been so cruel!” she cried reproachfully. Realising that she had betrayed herself, she tried to rise, but he was kneeling beside her chair. “Cruel? to a little tender thing like you! No, no; you know I couldn’t mean that,” he said. “It was cruel,” said Penelope, still unreconciled, and venting on him the anger she felt for herself. “It was unkind,” she repeated feebly. “What a blundering fool I am!” he cried furiously. “Why, you are trembling all over. Dear girl, don’t cry; I shall never forgive myself. It was only a--a sort of joke. The fact was, I have asked you to marry me twice already, you see, and I was so unlucky each time that it made me rather shy of doing it again. I thought I’d see if I couldn’t get it settled without exactly saying the words, you know. Tell me I’m a fool, Penelope; call me anything you like--but not cruel. Cruel to you! I deserve to be shot. Yes, I was cruel; I must have been, if you say so.” “You weren’t. I was silly,” came in a muffled voice. “I only thought--it would break my heart--to leave--Alibad.” “Only Alibad? Is it the bricks and mortar you are so fond of?” “I love every brick in the place, because you built it.” Thus it happened that the journey to Bab-us-Sahel, the suggestion of which had caused so much distress to Penelope, was duly undertaken, and Mr Crayne insisted that the wedding should take place from Government House. He said it was because there was some hope now that Keeling might get a little common-sense knocked into him at last, which might have sounded alarming to any one who did not know that the bride’s head barely reached the bridegroom’s shoulder. But Penelope had a secret conviction that the old man had not forgotten the morning at Alibad when he welcomed her as his future niece, and that he had penetrated her true feelings more nearly than she knew at the time. Held under such auspices, the wedding was graced by the presence of all the rank and fashion of Bab-us-Sahel; but Lady Haigh, who had received a box from home just in time, raised evil passions in the heart of every lady there by displaying the first crinoline ever seen in Khemistan. The bride was quite a secondary figure, for not only had she refused the loan of the coveted garment, but she defied public opinion by wearing an embroidered “country muslin” instead of the stiff white watered silk which her aunt and Colin had insisted she should take out with her three years before.