known you now a year, and know that my happiness is centred in
you; you too have known me a year, and I trust that I have read aright
the message that your eyes have been sending to me.

"`For I shall happiest be to-night,
Or saddest in the town;
Heaven send I read their message right,
Those eyes of hazel brown.'"

Anastasia found space in the press of her annoyance to laugh. It was
more than a smile, it was a laugh, a quiet little laugh to herself,
which in a man would have been called a buckle. Her eyes were not hazel
brown, they were no brown at all; but then brown rhymed with town, and
after all the verse might perhaps be a quotation, and must so be taken
only to apply to the situation in general. She read the sentence again,
"I have known you now a year; you too have known me a year." Westray
had thought this poetic insistence gave a touch of romance, and balanced
the sentence; but to Anastasia it seemed the reiteration of a platitude.
If he had known her a year, then she had known him a year, and to a
female mind the sequitur was complete.

"Have I read the message right, dearest? Is your heart my own?"

Message? What message did he speak of? What message did he imagine she
had wished to give _him_ with her eyes? He had stared at her
persistently for weeks past, and if her eyes sometimes caught his, that
was only because she could not help it; except when between whiles she
glanced at him of set purpose, because it amused her to see how silly a
man in love may look.

"Say that it is; tell me that your heart is my own" (and the request
seemed to her too preposterous to admit even of comment).

"I watch your present, dear Anastasia, with solicitude. Sometimes I
think that you are even now exposed to dangers of whose very existence
you know nothing; and sometimes I look forward with anxiety to the
future, so undecipherable, if misfortune or death should overtake your
aunt. Let me help you to decipher this riddle. Let me be your shield
now, and your support in the days to come. Be my wife, and give me
the right to be your protector. I am detained in London by business
for some days more; but I shall await your answer here with
overwhelming eagerness, yet, may I say it? not without hope.

"Your most loving and devoted

"Edward Westray."

She folded the letter up with much deliberation, and put it back into
its envelope. If Westray had sought far and wide