compromise? His heart beat wildly with love and ardour and shame. What would she say? Would she understand him, though he could not understand himself? “Mr. Ridsdale!” cried Lottie, shrinking back from him a little. She covered her face with her hands and began to cry, being overcome with so many emotions, one heaped on another. At another moment she would not have been surprised; she would have been able to lift her eyes to the glow of the full happiness which, in half-light, had been for weeks past the illumination of her life. But for the moment it dazzled her. She put up her hands between her and that ecstasy of light. As for Rollo, very different were the thoughts in his mind. He thought Lottie as wise as himself: he thought she had investigated his words; had not found in them the one that is surety for all, and shrank from him. Shame overwhelmed him: the agony of a mind which was really honest and a heart which was full of tenderness, yet found themselves on the verge of dishonour. “Lottie!” he cried with anguish in his voice, “you do not understand me--you will not listen to me. Do not shrink as if I meant any harm.” Then she uncovered her face, and he saw dimly through the twilight a countenance all trembling with emotion and happiness and astonishment. “Harm!” she said, with wonder in her voice--“harm!” His heart seemed to stand still, and all his confused thinkings broken off in the unspeakable contrast between the simplicity of her innocence thinking no evil, and the mere knowledge in his mind which, if nothing more, made guilt possible. Such a contrast shamed and horrified, and filled with an adoration of penitence, the man who might have drawn her into evil, ambiguously, had it been possible. He found himself with one knee on the cold gravel, before he knew, pressing his suit upon her with passion. “Lottie, you must marry me, you must be my wife, you must let me be the one to work, to take care of you, to protect you from all trouble,” he cried. But what did Lottie want with those more definite words which he had thought she missed and waited for? Had she not known his secret long ago before he ever spoke a word to her? Had she not been led delicately, tenderly, step by step, through infinite dreams and visions, towards this climax? She cried with happiness and trouble, and the sense of deliverance.