They left the room together. A servant came up to Mr. Hastings as he was crossing the hall, and said an applicant at the door craved speech of him. The Rector turned to it, and George entered the drawing-room alone. Maria stood, pale, anxious, excited, leaning against a corner of the window, half shrouded by the muslin curtains. She scarcely dared look up when George entered. It was not _his_ gaze that she dreaded to meet, but that of Mr. Hastings. To anger or displease her father was wormwood to Maria. George cast a glance round the room. "Where's Charlotte Pain?" he asked. "She is gone," was Maria's answer. "Oh, George!" clasping her hands, and lifting to him her streaming eyes: "it was cruel of her to say what she did!" "I could give it a better name than that, Maria. Never mind: we can afford to be generous to-day." "Is papa fully convinced that--that I do not deserve blame?" "He was convinced of that before he left this room. You are to be mine, Maria," he softly added in a whisper. "And very shortly. I must take you abroad with me." She stood before him, not daring to look up now: shrinking from his ardent gaze, the crimson mantling to her pure cheek. "Mr. Hastings demurs at the haste; calls it absurd," continued George; "but, if you will consent to waive ceremony, surely he may do so. Which would be more absurd, Maria? your marrying without the three months' preparation for millinery deemed necessary by fashion, or my going away alone for an indefinite period, perhaps to die." "Not to die, George!" she involuntarily answered in a tone painfully beseeching--as if he held the fiat of life or death in his own hands. "But--about the haste--I don't know---- I heard you thought of departing soon?" "I ought to be away in a fortnight's time." That startled her. "A fortnight's time!" she echoed, in a voice of alarm. "Then it could not be. What would Prior's Ash say?" "Maria," he gravely answered, "some nine months ago, when Sarah Anne Grame was seized with fever, my brother, alarmed for Ethel's safety, would have married her hastily, so that he might have the right to remove her from danger. Ethel's answer to him was, 'What would Prior's Ash say?'--as you have now answered me. Thomas bowed to it: he suffered the world's notions to reign paramount--and he lost Ethel. What value do you suppose _he_ sets now upon the opinions of Prior's Ash? The cases may not be precisely parallel, but they are sufficiently so to decide me. If I go away from home, I take you: if I may not take you, I do not go. And now, my darling, I will say farewell to you for the present." She was surprised. She thought he had come to stay for some hours. "Yes," he replied; "but affairs have changed since I entered. Until they shall be more definitively settled, Mr. Hastings will not care that I remain his guest."