If you think that you can love me, say so; and, as long as I live, I will do my best to make you happy as my wife." There was a clearness of expression in this, and a downright surrender of himself, which so flattered her and so fluttered her that she was almost reduced to the giving of herself up because she could not reply to such an appeal in language less courteous than that of agreement.

After a moment or two she found herself remaining silent, with a growing feeling that silence would be taken as conveying consent.

There floated quickly across her brain an idea of the hardness of a woman's lot, in that she should be called upon to decide her future fate for life in half a minute.

He had had weeks to think of this,--weeks in which it would have been almost unmaidenly in her so to think of it as to have made up her mind to accept the man.

Had she so made up her mind, and had he not come to her, where would she have been then?
But he had come to her.