"This won't make any difference in you, Mary? No, I needn't ask it, you wouldn't have come here to meet me to-night if that had been the case." "It ought to make a difference, George," she replied; "I am afraid I oughtn't to come out here and see you, when my father don't approve of it." "But you will come, my little darling, for all that;" he said. "Not here though--the devil only knows who may be loitering round here. Half a dozen pair of lovers a night perhaps--no, meet me up in the croft of a night. I am often in at Gosford's of an evening, and I can see your window from there, you put a candle in the right-hand corner when you want to see me, and I'll be down in a very few minutes. I shall come every evening and watch." "Indeed," she said, "I won't do anything of the sort; at least, unless I have something very particular to say. Then, indeed, I might do such a thing. Now I must go home or they will be missing me." "Stay a minute, Mary," said he; "you just listen to me. They will, some of them, be trying to take my character away. You won't throw me off without hearing my defence, dear Mary, I know you won't. Let me hear what lies they tell of me, and don't you condemn me unheard because I come from a bad house? Tell me that you'll give me a chance of clearing myself with you, my girl, and I'll go home in peace and wait." What girl could resist the man she loved so truly, when he pleaded so well? With his arm about her waist, and his handsome face bent over her, lit up with what she took to be love. Not she, at all events. She drew the handsome face down towards her, and as she kissed him fervently, said: "I will never believe what they say of you, love. I should die if I lost you. I will stay by you through evil report and good report. What is all the world to me without you?" And she felt what she said, and meant it. What though the words in which she spoke were borrowed from the trashy novels she was always reading--they were true enough for all that. George saw that they were true, and saw also that now was the time to speak about what he had been pondering over all day. "And suppose, my own love," he said; "that your father should stay in his present mind, and not come round?" "Well!" she said. "What are we to do?" he asked; "are we to be always content with meeting here and there, when we dare? Is there nothing further?" "What do you mean?" she said in a whisper. "What shall we do?" "Can't you answer that?" he said softly. "Try." "No, I can't answer. You tell me what." "Fly!" he said in her ear. "Fly, and get married, that's what I mean." "Oh! that's what you mean," she replied. "Oh, George, I should not have courage for that." "I think you will, my darling, when the time comes. Go home and think about it." He kissed her once more, and then she ran away homeward through the dark. But she did not run far before she began to walk slower and think.