‘Would it be so dreadful?’ he said, bending down over her. ‘Alice, just you and I. What would it matter where we were so long as we were together? I know it would matter nothing to me. I would take such care of you. I should be as happy as the day was long. I want nothing but to have you by me, to look at you, and listen to you. I do not care if there were not another creature in the world’, cried the youth; ‘just you and I!’ ‘Oh, don’t speak so!’ cried Alice, trembling in her agitation and astonishment. ‘Don’t, oh, don’t! You must not! How could I ever, ever leave mamma?’ ‘Then it is not me you object to?’ cried the lover, in triumph, taking her hands, taking herself to him in a tender delirium. This was how it came about. With no more preparation on either side, with everything against it,--friends, prudence, fortune, Nelly,--every influence you could conceive. And yet they did it without any intention of doing it,--on the mere argument of being left for half-an-hour alone together. True, it took more than half-an-hour to calm down the bewilderment of the girl’s mind, thus launched suddenly at a stroke into the wide waters of life. She looked back trembling upon her little haven, the harbour where she had lain so quietly a few minutes before. But we can never go back those few minutes. The thing was done, and nobody in the world could be more surprised at it than the two young, rash, happy creatures themselves, holding each other’s hands, and looking into each other’s faces, and asking themselves,--Could it be true? CHAPTER II. A STRUGGLE. There are moments in life which are so sweet as to light up whole weeks of gloom; and there are moments so dreadful as to make the unfortunate actors in them tremble at the recollection to the end of their lives. Such a moment in the life of Frank Renton was that in which he suddenly heard the padrona’s knock at her own door. He had been as happy as a young man could be. He had felt himself willing, and over again willing, to give up everything without a regret, for the sake of the love he had won, and which was, he said to himself, of everything in earth and heaven the most sweet. This he had said to himself a hundred times over as he hung over Alice in the first ecstasy of their betrothal. He could not imagine how he ever could have doubted. Going to India would, as he had said, be going to heaven. Where he went, she would be with him. He should have her all to himself, free from any interference. They would be free to go forth together, hand in hand, like Adam and Eve. What was any advantage the world could give in comparison to such blessedness? He was in the full flush of his delight when that awful knock was heard at the door.