you be so impertinent,--and so foolish?"

"You might as well, you know,--just once."

"Captain Bellfield, I brought you out here not for such fooling as
that, but in order that we might have a little chat about business.
If we are to be man and wife, as you say, we ought to understand on
what footing we are to begin together. I'm afraid your own private
means are not considerable?"

"Well, no; they are not, Mrs Greenow."

"Have you anything?" The Captain hesitated, and poked the ground
with his cane. "Come, Captain Bellfield, let us have the truth at
once, and then we shall understand each other." The Captain still
hesitated, and said nothing. "You must have had something to live
upon, I suppose?" suggested the widow. Then the Captain, by degrees,
told his story. He had a married sister by whom a guinea a week was
allowed to him. That was all. He had been obliged to sell out of the
army, because he was unable to live on his pay as a lieutenant. The
price of his commission had gone to pay his debts, and now,--yes,
it was too true,--now he was in debt again. He owed ninety pounds
to Cheesacre, thirty-two pounds ten to a tailor at Yarmouth, over
seventeen pounds at his lodgings in Norwich. At the present moment
he had something under thirty shillings in his pocket. The tailor at
Yarmouth had lent him three pounds in order that he might make his
journey into Westmoreland, and perhaps be enabled to pay his debts
by getting a rich wife. In the course of the cross-examination Mrs
Greenow got much information out of him; and then, when she was
satisfied that she had learned, not exactly all the truth, but
certain indications of the truth, she forgave him all his offences.

"And now you will give a fellow a kiss,--just one kiss," said the
ecstatic Captain, in the height of his bliss.

"Hush!" said the widow, "there's a carriage coming on the road--close
to us."

CHAPTER LXV

The First Kiss

"Hush!" said the widow, "there's a carriage coming on the road--close
to us." Mrs Greenow, as she spoke these words, drew back from the
Captain's arms before the first kiss of permitted ante-nuptial love
had been exchanged. The scene was on the high road from Shap to
Vavasor, and as she was still dressed in all the sombre habiliments
of early widowhood, and as neither he nor his sweetheart were under
forty, perhaps it was as well that they were not caught toying
together in so very public a place. But they were only just i