it is right of me to go on staying at the farm on our present footing?"

"Why, Mr. Vincent!" She looked up at him with her pure, grave eyes, and surprise was in her voice. "I'm sure, if James knew, he'd like to feel that you were here."

"I wonder if he would; I have heard that he was a godly man, and I am not."

"Don't say that," she answered, anxiously. "I've always held with doing what was right rather than with the saying of prayers, though James's people, of course, are different and very strict in their notions."

"You know nothing about me," he said, going on with his own train of thoughts, "of my family, nor my doings before I came here, and yet I have been wondering if you would marry me?" It did not seem necessary to him to tell her that his father had been a peer, or that his brother had made a foolish marriage and gone to the Antipodes, or that he himself had thrown over the church and wrecked his prospects on a metaphysical rock. These things, and knowledge of them, were so far outside her world and thoughts that telling her could serve no good end. It was better to be silent.

She went on with her knitting for half a minute, then put it down and asked, and there was a something in her voice that reached his heart: "Do you mean that you've got to care for me?"

"I think you are the kindest soul in the world," he said, and his own voice was not very steady, "and too young still, and too handsome," he added, with a little smile, "for it to be right that I should go on living here, whether it is as your lodger or your friend. We have been friends for a long time, you know--"

"I have come to think of you as one," she said, simply.

"You wouldn't like me to live anywhere else?"

"I couldn't bear the thought of it," she answered under her breath.

"But I can't go on staying here, except as your husband. I think we could be content enough."

She turned her head away from him; a happy smile struggled to her lips. He saw that she trembled. He rose and pulled her gently from her seat, and they stood together in front of the fireplace.

"Well?" he asked.

"I don't know what folk would say."

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