He looked round, saw that they were alone in the garden, and clasped her in his arms, polar bear and all, and kissed the unresisting lips, as he had kissed the unresisting hand. “My dearest,” he exclaimed, “that means for life, does it not?” “You are taking everything for granted,” she said; “but I suppose it must be so. Only remember I don’t want our engagement talked about till you are in a more assured position. My mother would make home a hell upon earth, if she knew.” “I will do nothing rash, nothing that you do not approve,” replied Harrington, considerably relieved by this injunction; for although it was not Matthew Dalbrook’s habit to make a pandemonium of the family circle, Harrington feared that he would strongly disapprove of such an alliance as that which his younger son had chosen for himself. He welcomed the idea of delay, hoping to be more firmly seated at the office desk before he must needs make the unpleasing avowal. “When my father finds I am valuable to him he will be more inclined to indulgence,” he thought. CHAPTER XV. “For men have marble, women waxen minds, And therefore are they formed as marble will; The weak oppress’d, the impression of change kinds, Is formed in them by force, by fraud, or skill; Then call them not the authors of their ill.” Inclination would have taken Theodore Dalbrook to Dorsetshire before the Christmas holidays gave him an excuse for going home; but he wrestled with that haunting desire to revisit the Priory, and to be again _tête-à-tête_ with his cousin in the dimly lighted room where she had talked to him of her own sorrows and of his ambitions. The memory of that last evening was the most vivid element in his life. It stood out like a spot of light against the dull grey of monotonous days, and the burden of dry-as-dust reading. But he had told her that he should not see her until Christmas time, and he was not weak enough to indulge that insane longing for the society of a woman whose heart was in the grave of her husband. November and the greater part of December stretched before him like a long dark road which had to be trodden somehow before he came to the inn at which there would be light and comfort, cheerful voices, and friendly greetings. He set his face resolutely towards that dark prospect, and tramped along, doing the work he had to do, living the life of a hermit in those chambers in Ferret Court, which had already taken the stamp of his own character, and looked as if he had lived in them for years.