"Why, it's simple enough. If Father finds fault with that, you can take it all back and say it all over again at The Oaks." Boyd smiled over the conceit, but he was not reassured by it. The case was one in which the least shadow of uncertainty seemed more than he could endure. "Oh I forgot," the girl went on, teasingly; "perhaps it wouldn't be agreeable to you to rehearse the scene." Boyd said not a word in reply, but he managed in another way to convince her that her doubt on that point was unfounded. When she had readjusted the "flat" that she wore as headgear--it had somehow become disarranged--she put jest aside, saying: "I think we needn't fear anything of that sort, Boyd. My father is apt to make distinctions, just as other people are. If he disliked you or disapproved of you, he would make trouble of course; but as it is I reckon he will brush the thing aside and scold about the idiocy that makes such silly rules." She paused in her speech for a space. Then she added, in a tone which the young man afterwards recalled in doubt and distress: "At any rate it makes no difference. Nothing can make any difference--now." "Tell me, please," he said gently, "just what you mean by that." "I am not a women to love lightly, or lightly to forget. Love seems to me a holy thing and to trifle with it is blasphemy. I have given you my love, Boyd, and there is no power in all the universe that can make me take it back. Even you could not do that. Nothing you might do--even if it were crime itself--could alter the fact that my love is all yours, now and forever." He drew her to him in a tender embrace, but spoke no word in reply. Speech in such a case must be an impertinence. Presently she went on: "That is what I meant, Boyd. I have promised to be your wife. I shall keep that promise if the stars fall. I have no doubt my father will cordially give his consent; but if it should be otherwise, it will make no difference--I shall keep my promise." How those words came back in after time to Boyd Westover! And how he pondered them in amazement and bitterness of soul! IV THE BEST LAID PLANS Margaret was right in her anticipations regarding Colonel Conway's attitude. He highly approved of the young man upon whose gallantry in rescue he had enthusiastically and incessantly descanted in all companies. He was in no mood to find fault with the slight lapse of Boyd Westover from conventional propriety. He liked the way in which Boyd presented his case, neither justifying his conduct by argument nor offering excuses for it, but treating it as a matter of manhood necessity. "I suppose I should not have addressed Margaret when I did," he said in manly fashion; "I ought to have waited, but under the circumstances I couldn't help myself. Hang it, Colonel, there are times when a man must do things he ought not."