"The most important thing of all. Everything else is in order. You, dear sir, have agreed to come and live with us. We are convinced that it's not a sacrifice, except for the leaving of certain old friends. You have a zest still for seeing and hearing the things you have been denied; it's to be our keen pleasure to make your days go by on wings. You're going to have plenty of room here for the bookcases and the books, all the furnishings you care to keep--in short, you're to live the old life with a fine new one as well. Altogether, everything is in train for the great change, except"--he crossed the hearthrug at a stride, and laid a son's hand upon the thin shoulder of Father Davy--"except the date of it," he finished, smiling down into the uplifted face. "But that," replied Georgiana's father without hesitation, "is not for me to settle. It is for you two." Craig looked across at Georgiana and for a minute studied her down-bent profile as she sat gazing into the flames; then came round to her, plucking a pillow from a big leather couch by the way, to drop it at her feet and throw himself down upon it. So placed he could look straight into her face. "You'll have to take an interest in the ceiling now if you succeed in avoiding me," he said, with a low laugh. "I don't want to avoid you," answered Georgiana, and let her eyes meet his fairly for an instant. She could not yet do this in a quite casual way. He crossed his arms upon her knee, sitting in a boyish attitude and looking not unlike a big boy for the moment, for all the lines of care were gone from his face in the soft firelight, and happiness had laid its rosy mantle over his shoulders as over hers. He began to speak rather quickly: "For the life of me, I can't think of a reason why you should go back and spend a winter in the same old grind, waiting till spring and--making me wait till spring. Why should anybody wait till spring? I've let you talk about all the work you were going to do this winter at home, but that was just because I didn't want to make you feel as if you were caught in a trap. I had an idea that for a few hours, anyhow, it might seem enough of a change to come down here and promise to marry a perfect stranger of a surgeon instead of the 'literary light' you knew. I thought we'd let it go at that for those few hours. But now--it doesn't seem to me possible to go back to bachelorhood again, even with such a prospect before me in the spring. Not after having tasted--this. Georgiana, why must I?" Her face was the colour of her roses. There was no getting away from the challenge of those eyes that watched her so steadily--not even by following his suggestion and gazing persistently ceilingward. Craig glanced at Father Davy, to find that his soft blue eyes showed no sign of shock, and that his face was perfectly placid as he looked and listened.