f to this one you will not listen, then hear another argument.
Perchance I do not love you. Would you win a loveless bride?"

"Perchance you can learn of love, or if not, I have enough to serve for
two."

"By my faith! it should not be difficult with a man so honest and so
well favoured. And yet--a further plea. My cousin Deleroy has cheated
you" (here her face hardened), "and I think I am offered to you by my
father in satisfaction of his honour, as men who have no gold offer a
house or a horse to close a debt."

"It is not so. I prayed you of your father. The loss, if loss there be,
is but a chance of trade, such as I face every day. Still, I will be
plain and tell you that I risked it with open eyes, expecting nothing
less, that I might come near to you."

Now she sat herself down in a chair, covering her face with her hands,
and I saw from the trembling of her body that she was sobbing. While I
wondered what to do, for the sight wrung me, she let fall her hands and
there were tears upon her face.

"Shall I tell you all my story, you good, simple gentleman?" she asked.

"Nay, only two things. Are you the wife of some other man?"

"Not so, though perhaps--once I went near to it. What is the other
question?"

"Do you love some other man so that your heart tells you it is not
possible that you should ever love me?"

"No, I do not," she answered almost fiercely, "but by the Rood! I hate
one."

"Which is no affair of mine," I said, laughing. "For the rest, let it
sleep. Few are they that know life's wars who have no scar to hide, and
I am not one of them, though in truth your lips made the deepest yonder
by the cave at Hastings."

When she heard this she coloured to her brow and forgetting her tears,
laughed outright, while I went on:

"Therefore let the past be and if it is your will, let us set our eyes
upon the future. Only one promise would I ask of you, that never again
will you be alone with the lord Deleroy, since one so light-fingered
with a pen would, I think, steal other things."

"By my soul! the last thing I desire is to be alone with my cousin
Deleroy."

Now she rose from the chair and for a little while we stood facing
each other. Then she very slightly opened her arms and lifted her face
towards me.

Thus did Blanche Aleys and I become affianced, though afterwards, when I
thought the business over, I remembered that never once did she say that
she would marry me. This, however, troubled