This was my position. If Julia listened to my avowal angrily, and renounced me indignantly, passionately, I lost fortune, position, profession; my home and friends, with the sole exception of my mother. I should be regarded alternately as a dupe and a scoundrel. Guernsey would become too hot to hold me, and I should be forced to follow my luck in some foreign land. If, on the other hand, Julia clung to me, and would not give me up, trusting to time to change my feelings, then I lost Olivia; and to lose her seemed the worse fate of the two. Julia was sitting alone in the drawing-room, which overlooked the harbor and the group of islands across the channel. There was no fear of interruption; no callers to ring the bell and break in upon our _tête-à-tête_. It was an understood thing that at present only Julia's most intimate friends had been admitted into our new house, and then by special invitation alone. There was a very happy, very placid expression on her face. Every harsh line seemed softened, and a pleased smile played about her lips. Her dress was one of those simple, fresh, clean muslin gowns, with knots of ribbon about it, which make a plain woman almost pretty, and a pretty woman bewitching. Her dark hair looked less prim and neat than usual. She pretended not to hear me open the door; but as I stood still at the threshold gazing at her, she lifted up her head, with a very pleasant smile. "I am very glad you are come, my dear Martin," she said, softly. CHAPTER THE SEVENTEENTH. A LONG HALF-HOUR. I dared not dally another moment. I must take my plunge at once into the icy-cold waters. "I have something of importance to say to you, dear cousin," I began. "So have I," she said, gayly; "a thousand things, as I told you this morning, sir, though you are so late in coming to hear them. See, I have been making a list of a few commissions for you to do in London. They are such as I can trust to you; but for plate, and glass, and china, I think we had better wait till we return from Switzerland. We are sure to come home through London." Her eyes ran over a paper she was holding in her hand; while I stood opposite to her, not knowing what to do with myself, and feeling the guiltiest wretch alive. "Cannot you find a seat?" she asked, after a short silence. I sat down on the broad window-sill instead of on the chair close to hers. She looked up at that, and fixed her eyes upon me keenly. I had often quailed before Julia's gaze as a boy, but never as I did now. "Well! what is it?" she asked, curtly. The incisiveness of her tone brought life into me, as a probe sometimes brings a patient out of stupor. "Julia," I said, "are you quite sure you love me enough to be happy with me as my wife?" She opened her eyes very widely, and arched her eyebrows at the question, laughed a little, and then drooped her head over the work in her hands. "Think of it well, Julia," I urged.