Perceiving that alarm had brought back all his tenderness, for here his right arm came round my neck in an embrace most sweet and full of protection, I cast to the winds my facile repentance for the trick I had played him, and answered him thus, using what remnant of dignity I could muster: "'T was not my good Charley that did cast me off, Ned. But when I found you would not heed my prayers; when I found that for some fancy of what the world should say of us you would again leave me alone, with, this time, perhaps, no hope of a return; when I thought how bitter three years of waiting have proved for a half-fledged maid, and perceived how much worse a thing were waiting without hope or limit for a woman grown, I dismounted and sat me down by the roadside. For I said I would never return to Drayton to see go out again into the night, alone and unhappy, the man that has saved our honor, giving to us out of the abundance of his own." And I waited for him, but even yet he would not speak. "What! will you shame me, Ned?" I cried. "Must I even say more? Then I here solemnly vow that unless you now say to me all--ask of me all that you would were you now as famous as Marshal Schomberg, and as high in favor as Mr. William Bentinck, I will not budge from this spot." This, with voice and bearing no doubt vastly heroical, I said. But, fearing it yet insufficient, I added shudderingly, in a manner I have since thought most humorously bathetical: "And I almost die for cold." Now, scarce even for my children, can I set down very particularly what followed. But there was much rain, and now two arms about me, and my head lay where it is not yet tired of lying, while my lover let flow in words the passion of his love that had so long been pent and dammed up in his heart. And I remember that when he kissed me, there came between his lips and mine a patch of mud, cast there doubtless by the feet of his horse in his flight from me; and also that we laughed together like children with no sorrow upon them, as he did try in the dark to wipe it away with his handkerchief, and how some of the soil did get in my mouth as I laughed. So strong in memory is often a little matter of this nature that when, not two days back from the time I sit here writing, being abroad with Colonel Royston to see some sport with Sir Giles Blundell's hounds, I received full in the teeth a hoof-shaped clod of earth, I was, for all the pain and discomfort of it, translated at once from the free air and pale, sweet winter sun back to that foul and bitter night and its dear core of love, red and glowing with the fire that shall comfort and illumine us both to the end of our days.