"Never mind,--it is my humour so to express it"--she went on--"I please your fancy, and you wish to marry me. Well now, all I ask is, go to my father and buy me at once! Conclude the bargain! And when you have bought me,--don't look so tragic!" and she laughed again--"and when you have paid the clergyman, and paid the bridesmaids (with monogram lockets or brooches) and paid the guests (with wedding-cake and champagne) and cleared up all scores with everybody, even to the last man who shuts the door of the nuptial brougham,--will you take me away,--far away from this place--this house, where my mother's face haunts me like a ghost in the darkness; where I am tortured by terrors night and day,--where I hear such strange sounds, and dream of such ghastly things,--" here her voice suddenly broke, and she hid her face against my breast--"Oh yes, Geoffrey, take me away as quickly as possible! Let us never live in hateful London, but at Willowsmere; I may find some of the old joys there,--and some of the happy bygone days." Touched by the appealing pathos of her accents, I pressed her to my heart, feeling that she was scarcely accountable for the strange things she said in her evidently overwrought and excitable condition. "It shall be as you wish, my darling," I said--"The sooner I have you all to myself the better. This is the end of March,--will you be ready to marry me in June?" "Yes," she answered, still hiding her face. "And now Sibyl," I went on--"remember,--there must be no more talk of money and bargaining. Tell me what you have not yet told me,--that you love me,--and would love me even if I were poor." She looked up, straightly and unflinchingly full into my eyes. "I cannot tell you that,"--she said,--"I have told you I do not believe in love; and if you were poor I certainly should not marry you. It would be no use!" "You are frank, Sibyl!" "It is best to be frank, is it not?" and she drew a flower from the knot at her bosom, and began fastening it in my coat--"Geoffrey what is the good of pretence? You would hate to be poor, and so should I. I do not understand the verb 'to love,'--now and then when I read a book by Mavis Clare, I believe love may exist, but when I close the book my belief is shut up with it. So do not ask for what is not in me. I am willing--even glad to marry you; that is all you must expect." "All!" I exclaimed, with a sudden mingling of love and wrath in my blood, as I closed my arms about her and kissed her passionately--"All!--you impassive ice-flower, it is not all!--you shall melt to my touch and learn what love _is_,--do not think you can escape its influence, you dear, foolish, beautiful child! Your passions are asleep,--they must wake!" "For you?" she queried, resting her head back against my shoulder, and gazing up at me with a dreamy radiance in her lovely eyes. "For me!" She laughed. "'Oh bid me love, and I will love!'"--she hummed softly under her breath.