as she had seen it
last.

The fact caused her no surprise. That he should still be there seemed
the natural--the anticipated thing; and without any pause--any moment
of hesitation or delay--she moved directly towards him.

As she reached his side, her cheeks were hot, her heart was still
beating unevenly; and, absorbed by her own emotion, she failed to see
the dejected droop of his shoulders, the slight, pathetic suggestion of
age in his bent back.

Her footsteps were scarcely audible on the damp earth, and she was
close beside him before he became conscious of her presence; as he did
so, however, he started violently, and the blood rushed incontinently
over his forehead and cheeks.

"Clodagh!" he stammered.

But Clodagh checked him, laying her hand quickly on his arm.

"Mr. Milbanke," she said hurriedly, "will you forgive me for what I
said? I want to take it back. I want to say that, if you still like,
I--I will marry you."

CHAPTER VII

And thus it came about that Clodagh Asshlin entered upon a new phase of
that precarious condition that we call life. The impulse that had
induced her to accept Milbanke's proposal was in no way complex. The
knowledge had suddenly been conveyed to her that, through no act of her
own, she had been placed under a deep obligation; and her primary--her
inherited--instinct had been to pay her debt as speedily and as fully
as lay within her power, ignoring, in her lack of worldly wisdom, the
fact that such a bargain must of necessity possess obligations other
than personal, which would demand subsequent settlement.

However unversed she may be in the world's ways, it is scarcely to be
supposed that any young girl, under normal conditions, can look upon
her own marriage as an abstract thing. But the circumstances of
Clodagh's case were essentially abnormal. Milbanke's proposal--and the
facts that brought her to accept it--came at a time when her mind and
her emotions were numbed by her first poignant encounter with death and
grief; and for the time being her outlook upon existence was clouded.
The present seemed something sombre, desolate, and impalpable; the
future something absolutely void.

For two days after the scene in the glen, she and Milbanke avoided all
allusion to what had taken place between them. He appeared possessed by
an insurmountable nervous reticence; while she, immersed in her
trouble, seemed almost to have forgotten what had occurred.

On the evenin