‘It was that, Brion, which made me afraid to set you right. I thought, if you knew the truth, you would not want to love me any more.’ ‘What has loving _you_ to do with titles? A man, save his veins were arctic ice, could love and desire you for your own self, I think. Did your father treat you kindly?’ ‘He had not been unkind, I trow, unless for my lady sister, who liked me not. He gave me my little Gritty. O, Brion, the day I had to go, and could not keep my tryst! He was ever so in his decisions, sudden and inexorable. I thought I should have wept myself to death.’ She turned to him, bewildered even with the memory: he held out passionate arms, unable to contain himself longer. ‘Come to your true-mate, pretty bird--Nay, I will have you. O, darling, after all these years--ten, if a day, Joan--and I have all that hunger to make good!’ ‘O, forbear, Brion! We shall be seen. O, I love you so.’ And then, all rosy and ruffled, she looked up in his face, and said, as she had said once before, so quaintly and trustingly: ‘Will you marry me, Brion?’ He laughed with joy. ‘How can such constancy live in such lovely kindness? Is it all for me--all? If I said no, Joan, would you love me still?’ ‘Yes, Brion.’ ‘Did ever “yes” sigh so sweetly from troubled lips! Shall we go to the church now?’ ‘I would we might.’ ‘Why not? I have friends of weight here. Hist, Joan--shall we, in good sooth? Are we not ten years betrothed, to justify a little haste at the end? Will you meet me again this afternoon?’ She whispered that she would, ashamed, now she had spoken, of her forwardness. The poor child had suffered in these years, made the bait and foil of a frigid and intolerant Pharisaism. The Mistress Medley who had undertaken her charge had never ceased to point in her the moral of ungodly appetites, or to hold her responsible, as it were, for her father’s sin. She had led a dull, disregarded life--on a penny a week pocket money--and could have suffered it only, as she told Brion, on the sure conviction that he would return to her some day. In that faith she had never wavered; it had kept her heart alive, and supported her through every desolate tribulation. And Brion, remembering his own errant thoughts, bowed ashamed before that whole-hearted fidelity. He could not give his tender maid enough love and fondling, but longed only for the moment when she should be secured to him, with nothing but death ever again to part them. They talked together yet awhile before they separated, for of what, in simple volume, had they not to deliver their souls--explanation, story, confession, all the crowded details of that long interval? Yet the stupendous thing of all was that their idyll, begun in the perfection of blossom, was about to consummate itself in the perfection of fruit. None could look at them, lovely things, and doubt it, and not envy either.