o love me?"

"Ah!" he said, as if at length he comprehended; "I was drunk last night,
and you must have time to get that image out of your mind."

She shook her head slowly. "You did not ask me last night to marry you.
I shall always, I think, be able to separate an unworthy image of you,
and forget it."

"Then you must mean that I am yet unworthy."

"My dear lord," she said after a moment or two, in which she seemed to
consider how best to make it plain to him, "you asked me just now to
marry you, but not because you knew me to be worthy; and though you may
command what you choose, and I can deny you nothing, I would not
willingly be your wife for a smaller reason. Nor did you ask me in the
strength of your will, your passion even, but in their weakness.
Am I not right?"

He was dumb.

"And is it thus," she went on, "that the great ones love and beget noble
children?"

"I see," he said at length, and very slowly. "It means that I must very
humbly become your wooer."

"It means that, if it be my honour ever to reward you, I would fain it
were with the best of me. . . . Send me away from Sabines, my lord, and
be in no hurry to choose. Your cousin--what is her name? Oh, I shall
not be jealous!"

With a change of tone she led him to talk of the new home he had
prepared for her--at a farmstead under Wachusett. He was sending
thither two of his gentlest thoroughbreds, that she might learn to ride.

"Books, too, you shall have in plenty," he promised. "But there will be
a dearth of tutors, I fear. I could not, for example, very well ask Mr.
Hichens to leave his cure of souls and dwell with two maiden ladies in
the wilderness."

She laughed. Her eyes sparkled already at the thought of learning to
be a horsewoman.

"I will do without tutors." She spread her arms wide, as with a
swimmer's motion, and he could not but note the grace of it. The palms,
turned outward and slightly downward, had an eloquence, too, which he
interpreted.

"I have mewed you here too long. You sigh for liberty."

She nodded, drawing a long breath. "I come from the sea-beach,
remember."

"Say but the word, and instead of the mountain, the beach shall be
yours."

"No. I have never seen a mountain. It will have the sound of waters,
too--of its own cataracts. And on the plain I shall learn to gallop,
and feel the wind rushing past me. These things, and a few books, and
Tatty--" Here she broke off, on a sudden thought.