l get knocked on the head, or else Mary will pine away again, and
Bartley will send her to Madeira, and we shall lose our happiness, as all
shilly-shallying fools do."

Mrs. Easton made no reply to this, though she listened attentively to it.
She walked to the window and thought quietly to herself; then she came
back again and sat down, and after a pause she said, very gravely,
"Knowing all I know, and seeing all I see, I advise you two to marry at
once by special license, and keep it secret from every one who knows
you--but myself--till a proper time comes to reveal it; and it's borne in
upon me that that time will come before long, even if Colonel Clifford
should not die this bout, which everybody says he will."

"Oh, nurse," said Mary, faintly, "I little thought that you'd be
against me."

"Against you, Miss Mary!" said Mrs. Eastern, with much feeling. "I admire
Mr. Walter very much, as any woman must with eyes in her head, and I love
him for loving of you so truly, and like a man, for it does not become a
man to shilly-shally, but I never saw him till he _was_ a man, but you
are the child I nursed, and prayed over, and trembled for in sickness,
and rejoiced over in health, and left a good master because I saw he did
not love you so well as I did."

These words went to Mary's heart, and she flew to her nurse, and hung
weeping round her neck. Her tears made the manly but tender-hearted
Walter give a sort of gulp. Mary heard it, and put her white hand out to
him. He threw himself upon his knees, and kissed it devotedly, and the
coy girl was won.

From this hour Walter gave her no breathing-time; he easily talked over
old Baker, and got him to excuse his short absence; he turned his hunters
into roadsters, and rode them very hard; he got the special license; he
squared a clergyman at the head of the lake, who was an old friend of his
and fond of fees, and in three days after her consent, Mary and Mrs.
Easton drove a four-wheeled carriage Walter had lent them to the little
hotel at the lakes. Walter had galloped over at eleven o'clock, and they
all three took a little walk together. Walter Clifford and Mary Bartley
returned from that walk MAN AND WIFE.

CHAPTER XII.

THE CLANDESTINE MARRIAGE.

Walter Clifford and Mary sat at a late breakfast in a little inn that
looked upon a lake, which appeared to them more lovely than the lake of
Thun or of Lucerne. He beamed steadily at her with triumphant rapture;