“It was only for your sake, Patty,” he said. “I’d marry you to-day if I could, you know. That’s what I should like--just to marry you straight off this very day.” He got up and came close to her, almost animated in the fervour of his passion. His dull eyes lighted up, a little colour came to his face. If he could only be made always to look like that, it would be something like! was the swift thought that passed through her mind. She kept him off, retreating a step, and raising both her hands. “Stand where you are, Mr. Gervase! You say so, I know; but I don’t see as you do anything to prove it, for all your fine words.” A look of distress, the puzzled distress habitual to it, came over poor Gervase’s face. His under lip dropped once more, “What can I do?” he cried; “if I knew, I’d do it fast enough. Patty, don’t it all stand with you?” “I never heard yet,” cried Patty, “that it was the lady who took the steps; everybody knows there’s steps that have to be took.” “What steps, what steps, Patty?” he cried, with a feeble glance at his own feet, and the trace of them on the sandy road. Then a gleam of shame and confusion came over the poor fellow’s face. He knew the steps to be taken could not be like that, and paused eager, anxious, with his mouth open, waiting for his instructions--like a faithful dog ready to start after any stick or stone. “Oh, you can’t expect me to be the one to tell you,” cried Patty, turning away as if to go back to the house; “the lady isn’t the one to think of all that.” “Patty! I’m ready, ready to do anything! but how am I to know all of myself? I never had anything of the sort to do.” “I hope not,” said Patty, with a laugh, “or else you wouldn’t be for me, Mr. Gervase, not if you were a duke--if you had been married before.” “I--married before! Patty, only tell me what to do!” He looked exactly like Dash, waiting for somebody to throw a stone for him, but not so clever as Dash, alas! with that forlorn look of incapacity in his face, and the wish which was not father to any thought. “Well, if you’re so pressing, a clergyman has the most to do with it.” “I’ll go off to the rector directly.” He was like Dash now, when a feint had been made of throwing the stone: off on the moment--yet with a sense that all was not well. “Oh! stop, you----!” Whatever the noun was, Patty managed to swallow it. “Come back,” she cried, as she might have cried to Dash. “Don’t you see? The rector; he’s the last man in the world.” “Why?” cried Gervase. “He knows me, and you, and everything.” “He knows--a deal too much,” said Patty; “he’d go and tell it all at the Hall, and make them send for the Lord Chancellor, or whatever it is.” Poor Gervase trembled a little. “Couldn’t we run away, Patty, you and me together?” he said humbly; “I know them that have done that.”