"To ask you," he said, "whether you would--pass your life with me. I am not much worth the taking. There is a poor title, there is a family which we might restore and--emancipate perhaps. You are rich, it would be of no advantage to you. But at all events it would not be like asking you to banish yourself, to leave all you cared for. I have little to say for myself," he went on after a pause with a little more energy, "you know me well enough. Whether I should ever be good for anything would--most likely--rest with you. I am at present under great depression--in trouble and fear--" Here he came to another pause, and looked out upon the silent mountains and great breadths of vacant air in which there was nothing to help: then with a sigh turned again and held out his hand. "Will you have me--Katie?" he said. Katie sat gazing at him with a wonder which had by degrees extinguished the sarcasm, the excitement, the expectation, that were in her face. She was almost awestricken by this strangest of all suits that could be addressed to a girl--a demand for herself which made no account of herself, and missed out love and every usual preliminary. It was serious indeed--as serious as death: more like that than the beginning of the most living of all links. She could not answer him with the indignation which in other circumstances she might have felt. It was too solemn for any ebullition of feeling. She felt overawed, little as this mood was congenial to her. "Lord Erradeen," she said, "you seem to be in great trouble." He made an affirmative movement of his head, but said no more. "--Or you would not put such a strange question to me," she went on. "Why should I have you? When a man offers himself to a girl he says it is because he loves her. You don't love me--" She made a momentary breathless pause with a half-hope of being interrupted; but save by a motion of his hand, Walter made no sign. "You don't love me," she went on with some vehemence, "nor do you ask me to love you. Such a proposal might be an insult. But I don't think you mean it as an insult." "Not that. You know better. Anything but that!" "No--I don't think it is that. But what is it then, Lord Erradeen?" Her tone had a certain peremptory sound which touched the capricious spring by which the young man's movements were regulated. He came to himself. "Miss Williamson," he said, "when you ran away from me in London it was imminent that I should ask you this question. It was expected on all sides. You went away, I have always believed, to avoid it." "Why should it have been imminent? I went away," cried Katie, forgetting the contradiction, "because some one came in who seemed to have a prior right. She is here now with the same meaning." "She has no prior right. She has no right at all, nor does she claim any," he said hurriedly. "It is accident. Katie! had you stayed, all would have been determined then, and one leaf of bitter folly left out of my life."