arriage--get in, get in, get in!"

He fairly lifted her in as he spoke.

Stunned, terrified, bewildered, she struggled in vain. He only laughed
aloud, caught up the reins, and struck the horse with the whip. The
horse, a spirited one, darted forward like a flash; there was a girl's
faint, frightened scream.

"O Laurence! let me go!"

A wild laugh drowned it--they flew over the ground like the wind. Norine
was gone! His exultant singing mingled with the crash of the wheels as
they disappeared.

"She is won! they are gone over bush, brake and scar;
They'll have fleet steeds that follow, quoth young Lochinvar."

CHAPTER VIII.

FLED!

Mr. Gilbert went to his room, went to his bed, but he did not go to
sleep. He lay awake so long, tossing restlessly, that, at last, in
disgust, he got up dressed himself partly, and sat down in the darkness
by his open chamber window; to have it out.

What was the matter with Norine? Headache; she had said--but to eyes
sharpened by deep, true love, it looked much more like heartache. The
averted eyes, the faltering voice, the pallid cheeks, the shrinking
form, betokened something deeper than headache. Was she at the eleventh
hour repenting her marriage? Was she still in love with Laurence
Thorndyke? Was she pining for the freedom she had resigned? Was there no
spark of affection for him in her girl's heart after all?

"I was mad and presumptuous to dream of it," he thought. "I am
thirty-six--she is seventeen. I am not handsome, nor brilliant, nor
attractive to a girl's fancy in any way--she is all. Yes, she is pining
for him, and repenting of her hastily-plighted troth. Well, then, she
shall have it back. If I loved her tenfold more than I do, and Heaven
knows to love her any better than I do mortal man cannot, still I would
resign her. No woman shall ever come to me as wife with her heart in
the keeping of another man. Better a thousand times to part now than to
part after marriage. I have seen quite too much, in my professional
capacity of marrying in haste and repenting at leisure, to try it
myself. I will speak to her to-morrow; she shall tell me the truth
fearlessly and frankly while it is not yet too late, and if it be as I
dread, why, then, I can do as better men have done--bear my pain and go
my way. Poor, pretty little Norry! with her drooping face and pathetic,
wistful eyes--she longs to tell me, I know, and is afraid. It is a very
tender heart, a very ro