"'Why then, I should have to love you twenty times more than ever I suppose, that's all!' I answered, with a laugh. "'You don't mean what you say--at least you don't know what you say. You are not so brave as you think you are, sir! What do you know of me?' She spoke these sentences in a lower, graver tone than the previous ones, which had been uttered in a vein of half-wayward, fanciful playfulness. Almost immediately, however, she roused herself again, as though unwilling to let the lightsome humour escape so soon. "'Well, let us pretend that you have married me, for better or worse, and that it is all settled. Now, where will you take me to first?' "'Where do you wish to go?' "'Oh, it must be somewhere where nobody could come after us,' she exclaimed, with a curious subdued laugh. 'Nobody that either of us has ever known; neither your mother, nor my father, nor--nor anybody! And there we must stay always; because as soon as we came out, we should lose each other, and never find each other again. And that would be sadder than never to have met, wouldn't it?' "'But, my darling Kate,' interposed I, laughing again, 'where on earth, in this age of railways and steamboats and telegraphs and balloons, are we to find such a very retired spot? Unless we took a voyage to the moon, or could find our way down to the centre of the earth, we should hardly feel safe, I fear!' "'Oh, well, you must arrange about that; only it is as I tell you; and you see marrying me is not such a simple matter after all. Well, now, suppose we have reached the place, wherever it is--what would you give me for a wedding present?' "'What would you like?' "'No--you are to decide that. It wouldn't be proper for your wife to choose her own wedding present, you know.' "'I believe such a thing does sometimes happen though, when the people are very fashionable and aristocratic.' "'But I am not aristocratic; I am an American. Now, what will you give me?' "'What do you say to the diamonds?' "'Well, I think I will take the diamonds,' she said meditatively, as though weighing the question in her mind. 'Yes, papa said I might wear diamonds after I was married. But might not your mother object?' "'Not when she knows whom they are for; and, at any rate, she is going to leave them to me in her will.' "'Oh! and you expect that the news of our marriage will kill her?' "'It ought rather to give her a new lease of life. But you shall have the diamonds all the same. Will you try them on now?' "'Why, have you got them with you?' "'Certainly: I always carry them in this pocket.' "'How careless! You might lose them.' "'No: the pocket buttons up; see!' and turning back the flap of my coat, I showed her how all was made secure. "'But what if robbers were to attack you?' "'Then I should talk to them with this,' I rejoined, taking my revolver from another pocket, and holding it up. "'Oh, that's a derringer! they have those in America. What a pretty one! Let me look at it.'