"They are a great deal too intimate with Tomlett," spoke Miss Thornycroft, curling her lip. "He is no better than a boatman. My belief is, they go and drink gin-and-water with him. They ought to have more pride." "Mr. Richard said there was some 'bother.'" "Oh! of course; any excuse before you. I tell you, Anna, they are just a couple of loose young men." The "loose young men" came in shortly; Richard to go away again, Isaac to remain. He had told Mrs. Copp he would see her home safely. "Let it be by daylight, if you please," answered that discreet lady. Not by daylight, but under the stars of the sweet summer's night, they went out. There was no one to see; the way was lonely; and Isaac drew Anna's hand within his arm for the first time, and kept it a prisoner. "I must take care of you, Anna, as you are to become my own property." "But I--I am not to become that; I wish I could, but it is impossible," she stammered, setting about her task in hesitating perplexity. "Anna, do you understand me? I am asking you to be my wife." "Yes, I--I believe I understood; and I feel very grateful to you, all the same." "All the same!" Isaac Thornycroft released her hand and turned to face her. "Just tell me what you mean. Don't you care for me?" Agitated, embarrassed, she burst into tears. Isaac took both her hands now, holding them before him. They had reached the churchyard, and its graves were distinct in the twilight; the stars looked down on them from the blue sky above; the sound of the surging sea came over with a faint murmur. "I thought you loved me, Anna. Surely I cannot have been steering on a wrong tack?" As the soft eyes glanced at him through their tears, he saw enough to know that she _did_ love him. Reassured on that score, he turned and walked on again, her arm kept within his. "Now, tell me what you mean," he said, quietly. "There can be no other bar." "I do not know how to tell you," she answered. "I do not like to tell you." "Nonsense, Anna. I shall keep you out here pacing the heath until you do tell, though it be until morning, which would certainly send Mrs. Copp into a fit." Not very awkwardly when she had fairly entered upon it, Anna told her tale--her sense of the unfitness, nay, the impossibility of the union--of the wide social gulf that lay between them. Isaac met the communication with a laugh. "Is that all! It is my turn now not to understand. You have been reared a gentlewoman, Anna." "Papa was a clergyman. I have been reared, I think, to nothing but work. We were so very poor. My home--ah! if you could see, if you could imagine the contrast it presented to this of yours! As I sat in your drawing-room to-night I could not help feeling the difference forcibly."