‘Yes; because you are just the sweetest angel, Susan. What sort of rings do you like best?’ Susan is silent for a moment, and now through all the rose-white of her skin a warm flush rises. ‘You are going to give me a ring?’ says she. ‘Do you know, I hadn’t thought of that. A ring! I have never had a ring!’ He draws her head softly down upon his breast. ‘Your first will be a sacred one, then. It will be our engagement-ring, my darling!’ ‘I should like a blue ring,’ says Susan shyly, after a little while. ‘Like your own eyes. Sapphire, then? So be it. It will do for a first one. But you must have a keeper for it, Susan, and you must leave that to me.’ He is silent a moment. Where are the best diamonds to be got? ‘Now, come,’ says he; ‘I think honestly we ought to tackle your father together.’ CHAPTER LVIII. ‘My heart is full of joy to-day, The air hath music in it.’ Mr. Barry is sitting at his shabby writing-table in his very shabby study. His pale, refined face seems paler than usual, and there is a look of dejection in his sunken eyes that goes to Crosby’s heart. He has entered the room without a word of warning—a very reluctant Susan at his back—and has therefore caught that look on the Rector’s face before he has had time to take it off. ‘Mr. Barry,’ begins he quickly. ‘I—we—Susan, where are you?—we’—with emphasis that devastates the soul of the culprit next him—‘have come to tell you that—Susan, this is mean,’ as Susan makes a base effort to hide behind him once again—‘that Susan and I’—he laughs a little here, partly through nervousness, and partly because of an agonized, if unconscious, pinch from Susan on his arm—‘want to get married.’ Mr. Barry lays down the pen he has been holding since their unexpected entrance, and stares at Crosby as though he were the proud possessor of two heads, or else a decided madman. At last a flush dyes the pallor of his face. ‘Sir,’ says he, with dignity, ‘if this is a jest——’ ‘Not a jest such as you think,’ breaks in Crosby quickly; ‘though I hope our life together’—with a quick glance back at Susan, who still declines to show herself—‘will have a good deal of laughter in it. What I really want you to know’—gently—‘is that I have asked Susan to marry me, and she has said “Yes,” if’—with charming courtesy—‘you will give your consent.’ Mr. Barry rises from his chair. If he could be paler than he was a moment since, he is certainly so now. ‘Do you mean to tell me that you want’—he points at the only part of the abashed Susan that he can see—‘that you want that child for your wife?’ There is a slight pause. It is long enough for Susan to cast an eloquent glance at Crosby. ‘I told you so,’ is the gist of it. ‘She is nineteen,’ says Crosby; ‘and she says that she——’ Here he comes to grief; it seems impossible to so true a lover to say out aloud that Susan has confessed her love for him. He turns round.