p out of my way," muttered Thurstane, only in part pacified.

"Yes," answered Clara, thinking that she would herself send Coronado off,
so that there might be no duel between him and this dear one.

Presently the lover added one thing which he had felt all the time ought
to have been said at first.

"The letter--it was right. Although _he_ wrote it, it was right. I have no
claim to marry a rich woman, and you have no right to marry a poor man."

He uttered this in profound misery, and yet with a firm resolution. Clara
turned pale and stared at him with anxious eyes, her lips parted as though
to speak, but saying nothing. Knowing his fastidious sense of honor, she
guessed the full force with which this scruple weighed upon him, and she
did not know how to drag it off his soul.

"You are worth a million," he went on, in a broken-hearted sort of voice
which to us may seem laughable, but which brought the tears into Clara's
eyes.

The next instant she brightened; she knew, or thought she knew, that she
was not worth a million; so she smiled like a sunburst and caught him
gayly by the wrists.

"A million!" she scoffed, laughingly. "Do you believe all Coronado tells
you?"

"What! isn't it true?" exclaimed Thurstane, reddening with joy. "Then you
are not heir to your grandfather's fortune? It was one of _his_ lies? Oh,
my little girl, I am forever happy."

She had not meant all this; but how could she undeceive him? The tempting
thought came into her mind that she would marry him while he was in this
ignorance, and so relieve him of his noble scruples about taking an
heiress. It was one of those white lies which, it seems to us, must fade
out of themselves from the record book, without even needing to be blotted
by the tear of an angel.

"Are you glad?" she smiled, though anxious at heart, for deception alarmed
her. "Really glad to find me poor?"

His only response was to cover her hands, and hair, and forehead with
kisses.

At last came the question, When? Clara hesitated; her face and neck
bloomed with blushes as dewy as flowers; she looked at him once piteously,
and then her gaze fell in beautiful shame.

"When would you like?" she at last found breath to whisper.

"Now--here," was the answer, holding both her hands and begging with his
blue-black eyes, as soft then as a woman's.

"Yes, at once," he continued to implore. "It is best everyway. It will
save you from persecutions. My love, is it not best?"