"You're never going to keep it till the very last minute just before they think you're going? My goodness, I couldn't bear it. I'll simply scream. I know I shall." "Look here, Essie, I'll tell you. I'm going by the five o'clock train to London--" Essie corrects him. "You mean that's what you'll say you are. Oh, how ever I won't scream I can't think!" "Well, just before that we'll say we're going for a last walk together--for me to say good-bye to everything; and then we'll arrange how to--tell them." She clapped her hands and laughed with glee. "If you're not a caution, Arthur! Oh, how ever I won't scream before five o'clock! Oh, when we tell them!" At five o'clock she was to be lying still, with silent lips: he on his knees: death waiting. CHAPTER XI THE BUSINESS I "You're never going to keep it till the very last minute?" Essie had said. Mr. Wriford's plan rested for its actual execution upon this very fact of keeping it till the very last minute--from her. Essie had thrilled with the delicious mystification of "They think you're going to-day." It was his carefully deliberated project suddenly to spring upon her that indeed he was going to-day--and then to ask her: "I'm going, Essie--by this train--I'm not going back to say good-bye--I'm going now--for ever. Essie, are you coming with me?" Thus was she suddenly to be presented with it. Thus was she to decide--flatly, immediately. She was to know what sort of union he intended. She was either to fear it and let him go from her--as he would go--at once and for ever; or of her love for him he was to carry her with him--immediately, to have always for his own! Let Essie decide! He was holding to that. With Essie let the decision be! All he was doing was to present the decision to her sharp and clear and sudden: all he had done was to tell her that he loved her. But there resulted to him this: that between the sharpness of the decision she was to make and the love he had pressed upon her in these intervening Whitecliffe days, between the effects of these on such as Essie was, he was certain of her, convinced of her: so utterly assured of her that as, after lunch, they left the house for that last walk in which he was "to say good-bye to everything," he told Mr. and Mrs. Bickers: "Don't be anxious if we're not back by half-past four. There's another train at seven. I can just as well go by that if we find we want to stop out a bit;" so certain of her that, as they left the house, "Bring a warm wrap of some kind," he said to Essie. "Bring that long cloak of yours."