Cecil coloured angrily, and then burst out laughing.

"I can't afford to quarrel with you in this disgusting desolation, it
would be like the two men in the lighthouse; but remember, sir, it goes
down to your account when I am restored to my friends."

"The captive should not use threats. I am not intimidated. What should
now forbid that I whirl you away on the next car to _Ne Yock_, and marry
you right off? and then you would have to obey me ever afterwards."

"Bertie, you forget yourself," with great dignity and rising colour.

"I can't help my unselfish nature. I never do think of myself. Seriously,
Cecil, would it not be a good plan?"

"I hardly understand how you would effect it in broad daylight against my
will."

"Nothing more easy. I shouldn't put you into the train till it was just
going, and I am sure you would have too much self-respect to make a
disturbance. If you did, I would point to my forehead, and shake my head
expressively. Then, probably, the guard would assist me. After we were
married, I should shut you up for a time to reconcile you to the
situation, and by degrees, if you pleased me, I would allow you more
liberty."

"Suppose I ran away and never returned."

"Oh, you would always be watched, I should, perhaps, let you get a little
distance to encourage you, and then bring you back again."

Cecil would not vouchsafe a retort. She thought Bertie's behaviour in the
very worst taste, and had never known him so little agreeable. But there
they were incarcerated, and the wind still howled. "How was it they were
so little in tune," she wondered, "wasting time with this tactless
badinage?" Bertie, too, whose greatest charm was his lightning perception
of all her thoughts and feelings, could he possibly think--and here a hot
glow mounted to her cheeks, which were not cooled by feeling her hand
suddenly captured by Du Meresq, as he whispered in her ear,--

"As we always get into scrapes together, don't you think, Cecil, for the
future we had better only be responsible to each other?"

"I think," said she, flaming up at last, and her bright eyes flashing
indignantly upon him, "that your conduct is idiotic and ungentlemanly:
What right have you to make me the subject of your silly jokes?"

"I have made you look at me at last," cried he, "though I am almost
'blasted with excess of light.' Dearest Cecil, you must know what I have
come to Rice Lake for, and that you can make me the happiest or mos