"Mary!--Mary _darling_!--is it mine?" The question was just whispered, and she whispered her reply. They were alone in a lovely wilderness of fell and stream. Only a shepherd walked with his flock in a field half a mile away, and across the valley a ploughman drove his horses. At the murmur in his ear, Meynell, this time, put up both hands, and drew her down to him. The touch of her fresh lips was rapture. And yet-- "My rose!" he said, almost with a groan. "What can you make of such an old fellow? I love you--_love_ you--but I am not worthy of you!" "I am the judge of that," she said softly. And looking up he saw the colour in her cheeks fluttering, and two bright tears in her eyes. Timidly she took one hand away from him and began to stroke back the hair from his brow. "You look so tired!"--she murmured--"as though you had been in trouble. And I wasn't there!" "You were always there!" And springing from his lowly seat, he came to the rock beside her, and drew her within the shelter of his cloak, looking down upon her with infinite tenderness. "You don't know what you're undertaking," he said, his eyes moist, his lips smiling. "I am an old bachelor, and my ways are detestable! Can you ever put up with the pipes and the dogs? I am the untidiest man alive!" "Will Anne ever let me touch your papers?" "Goodness! what will Anne say to us! I forgot Anne," he said, laughing. Then, bending over her, "We shall be poor, darling!--and very uncomfortable. Can you really stand it--and me?" "Shall we have a roof over our heads at all?" asked Mary, but so dizzily happy that she knew but vaguely what she said. "I have already bespoken a cottage. They are going to make me Editor of the _Modernist_. We shall have bread and butter, dearest, but not much more." "I have a little," said Mary, shyly. Meynell looked rather scared. "Not much, I hope!" "Enough for gowns!--and--and a little more." "I prefer to buy my wife's gowns--I will!" said Meynell with energy. "Promise me, darling, to put all your money into a drawer--or a money-box. Then when we want something really amusing--a cathedral--or a yacht--we'll take it out." So they laughed together, he all the while holding her close crushed against him, and she deafened almost by the warm beating of a man's heart beneath her cheek.