If Isaac Thornycroft had not seen what she spoke of, he had seen something else--that never in his whole life had he met any one who gave him so entirely the idea of a gentlewoman--a refined, well-bred gentlewoman--as this girl now speaking with him, Anna Chester. He continued in evident amusement. "Let us see how your objections can be refuted. You play and sing?" "A little." "You draw?" "A little." "You can dance?" "Yes; I can dance." "Why, then--not to enter on other desirable qualities--you are an accomplished young lady. What _do_ you mean about unfitness?" "I see you are laughing at me," she said, the tears struggling to her eyes again. "I am so very poor; I teach for the merest trifle: it barely finds me in the cheapest clothes. I only looked forward to a life of work. And you are rich--at least Mr. Thornycroft is." "If we have a superfluity of riches, there's all the more cause for me to dispense with them in a wife. Besides, when I set up my tent, it will not be on the scale of my father's house. Anna, my darling!" he added, with a strange gravity in his eye and tone, "we are more on an equality than you may deem." She made no reply, having enough to do to keep her tears from falling. "I have sufficient for comfort--a sort of love-in-a-cottage establishment," went on Isaac; "and I am heartily sick of my bachelor's life. It leads me into all sorts of extravagances, and is unsatisfactory at the best. You must promise to be my wife, Anna." "There are the lights in Captain Copp's parlour," said she, with singular irrelevance. "Just so. But you do not go in until I have your promise." "They were saying one day, some of them--I think it was Mrs. Connaught--that you would be sure to marry into one of the good county families," murmured Anna. "Did they? I hope the disappointment won't be too much for them. I shall marry you, Anna, and none other." "But what would your family say? Your father--your sister?" "Just what they pleased. Anna, pardon me, I am only teasing you. Believe me, they will only be too glad to hear of it; glad that the wild, unsteady (as Mary Anne is pleased to call me on occasion) Isaac Thornycroft should make himself into a respectable man. Anna! can you not trust me?" She had trusted all her life, yielded implicitly to the sway of those who held influence over her; little chance was there, then, that she could hold out now. Isaac Thornycroft received the promise his heart hungered for, and sealed it. Her face gathered against his breast; her slight form shrinking in his strong arms; he kept her there a prisoner; his voice breathing soft love-vows; his blue eyes bent greedily on her blushing face; his kisses, the only honest kisses his life had known, pressed again and again upon her lips. "Who on earth _is_ that? Avast, thieves! Bea serpents! pirates!"