"I should have had four years more of your heart than I can ever have

now. Then I should not have wasted my time as I have done--I should

have had so much longer happiness!"

It was no mature woman with a long dark vista of intrigue behind her

who was tormented thus, but a girl of simple life, not yet one-and

twenty, who had been caught during her days of immaturity like a bird

in a springe. To calm herself the more completely, she rose from her

little stool and left the room, overturning the stool with her skirts

as she went. He sat on by the cheerful firelight thrown from a bundle of green

ash-sticks laid across the dogs; the sticks snapped pleasantly, and

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hissed out bubbles of sap from their ends. When she came back she

was herself again. "Do you not think you are just a wee bit capricious, fitful, Tess?"

he said, good-humouredly, as he spread a cushion for her on the

stool, and seated himself in the settle beside her. "I wanted to

ask you something, and just then you ran away."

"Yes, perhaps I am capricious," she murmured. She suddenly

approached him, and put a hand upon each of his arms. "No, Angel,

I am not really so--by nature, I mean!" The more particularly to

assure him that she was not, she placed herself close to him in the

settle, and allowed her head to find a resting-place against Clare's

shoulder. "What did you want to ask me--I am sure I will answer it,"

she continued humbly. "Well, you love me, and have agreed to marry me, and hence there

follows a thirdly, 'When shall the day be?'"

"I like living like this."

"But I must think of starting in business on my own hook with the

new year, or a little later. And before I get involved in the

multifarious details of my new position, I should like to have

secured my partner."

"But," she timidly answered, "to talk quite practically, wouldn't it

be best not to marry till after all that?--Though I can't bear the

thought o' your going away and leaving me here!"

"Of course you cannot--and it is not best in this case. I want you

to help me in many ways in making my start. When shall it be? Why

not a fortnight from now?"

"No," she said, becoming grave: "I have so many things to think of

first."




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