The question had a tone of masterful command about it, for, though he knew how spontaneous and straightforward she was, her natural delicacy unspoiled by artificial sentiment, he yet prepared himself to encounter a certain amount of maidenly reluctance to meet a man's reasonable views upon this matter. But she answered him without delay or hesitation, impelled by the terrors that beset her and thinking of Patty's awful warnings and prophesyings--"I will leave you to say when." "Will you really? Do you mean you will _really?_" His deep-set eyes glowed, and his voice had a thrilling tremor in it as he made this incredulous inquiry. "Then I say we will be married soon--_very_ soon--so as not to lose a day more than we can help. Will you agree to that?" She looked a little frightened, but she stood her ground. "If you wish," she whispered, all the tone shaken out of her voice. "If _I_ wish!" A palpitating silence held them for a moment. Then "What do you say to _to-morrow?_" he suggested. She looked up at him, blushing violently. "Ah, you are thinking how forward I am!" she exclaimed, drawing her hand from his. "Elizabeth," he remonstrated, with swift energy, "did I not ask you, ever so long ago, not to be conventional? Why should I think you forward? How can you be forward--with _me?_ You are the most delicate-minded woman I ever knew, and I think you are showing yourself so at this moment--when anything short of perfect truth and candour would have disappointed me. Now, I am quite serious--will you marry me to-morrow? There is no reason why you should not, that I can see. Just think of it, calmly. Mrs. Duff-Scott gave her consent a fortnight ago--yes, she gave it privately, to _me_; and Patty and Nelly, I know, would be delighted. As for you and me, what have we--honestly, what _have_ we--to wait for? Each of us is without any tie to be broken by it. Those who look to us will all be better off. I want to get home soon, and you have taken me, Elizabeth--it will be all the same in the end--you know that no probation will prove us unfit or unwilling to marry--the _raison d'être_ of an engagement does not exist for us. And I am not young, my love, and life is short and uncertain; while you--" "I am not young either," she interrupted. "I shall soon be thirty."