"But your father can't do anything to you," he objected when she had outlined her plan of going to Aunt Susan's to stay till the wedding. "Everybody knows that you have left there and You'll have to explain things and get into a scandal." Without going into details, Elizabeth insisted that he drive on at once and get her trunk before her father and the family should get home from church. John Hunter argued the matter. "If you leave home," he said slowly, refusing to drive on, "people will talk, and it isn't to be considered." There was a pause. Should she explain the case fully? It could not be done. John could not be made to understand. Elizabeth knew that even in the primitive community in which she had been brought up a man would be filled with disgust at the idea of striking a full-grown woman on any sort of provocation, and that a man reared as John Hunter had been reared would be alienated not only from her family but from her. Caught like a rat in a trap, Elizabeth Farnshaw let her future husband study her curiously, while she deliberated and cast about for some means of getting his approval to her scheme without villifying her parents by telling the whole truth. "I'll be nearer you, and Aunt Susan's always glad to have me," she said coaxingly. It was a good bit of argument to put forth at that moment. The sun poured his heat out upon them in scalding fierceness, and John Hunter had cursed his luck every mile he had covered that morning. He had been accustomed to reach her in fifteen minutes, and the suggestion that she go back to the old place began to look more reasonable, yet he hesitated and was reluctant to let a breath of gossip touch his future wife. Whether Elizabeth were right or wrong did not enter into his calculations. It looked as if his consent was not to be obtained. She could not go back. "I'm not going home, and that is all that there is about it," the girl announced in desperation. John still hung back. When he did not reply and it became necessary for her to go into the details she had been trying to avoid, it was done reluctantly and with as little emphasis put upon the possibility of physical chastisement as could be done and convince him at all. To Elizabeth's surprise John did not take much notice of that element. It did not occur to her at that time that it was a strange thing that her lover should fail to be stirred by the probability of her receiving a blow. Elizabeth had never had consideration shown her by any one but Susan Hornby and had not yet learned to expect it. John struck the horses with the dangling lines he held and drove on toward the waiting trunk. She watched him as he rode by her side moodily thinking of the gossip threatened, and while it was not the mood she wished him to entertain, it did not occur to her that it was anything but a natural one. They rode without speaking until the house was reached.