“You mustn’t let that little mistake of Auber Great Meadow mean anything, missie,” he said. “You were too hasty with a fellow that time--too hasty and coy-like. Those be queer maids’ tricks, that crying and running! But, bless my heart! I don’t bear you any grudge for it. You needn’t think it.” He advanced a step--while she retreated, very pale and very calm, her little fingers clasped nervously together. She managed to keep the table between them, so that, barring a grotesque and obvious pursuit of her, she was well out of his reach. “I have a plain and simple offer to make to you, my dear,” he continued, “and it is one that can do you no hurt or shame. I am not one of those who waste words in courting a girl, least of all a young lady of education like yourself. The fact is, I am a lonely man--without wife or child--and as far as I know no relations on earth, except brother Mortimer. And I have a pretty tidy sum laid up in Yeoborough Bank, and the farm is a good farm. I do not say that the house is all that could be wished; but ’tis a pretty house, too, and one that could stand improvement. In plain words, dearie, what I want you to say now is ‘yes,’ and no nonsense,--for what I am doing,” his voice became quite husky at this point, as if her propinquity really did cause him some emotion, “is asking you, point-blank, and no beating about the bush, whether you will marry me!” Lacrima’s face during this long harangue would have formed a strange picture for any old Cistercian monk shadowing that ancient room. At first she had kept unmoved her strained and tensely-strung impassivity. But by degrees, as the astounding character of the man’s communication began to dawn upon her, her look changed into one of sheer blind terror. When the final fatal word crossed the farmer’s lips, she put her hand to her throat as though to suppress an actual cry. She had never looked for this;--not in her wildest dreams of what destiny, in this curst place, could inflict upon her. This surpassed the worst of possible imagination! It was a deep below the deep. She found herself at first completely unable to utter a word. She could only make a vague helpless gesture with her hand as though dumbly waving the whole world away. Then at last with a terrible effort she broke the silence. “What you say is utterly--utterly impossible! It is--it is too--”