little sisters and brothers, and you danced on the green? O, why
didn't you, why didn't you!' she said, impetuously clasping her
hands.
Angel began to comfort and reassure her, thinking to himself, truly
enough, what a creature of moods she was, and how careful he would
have to be of her when she depended for her happiness entirely on
him.
'Ah--why didn't I stay!' he said. 'That is just what I feel. If I
had only known! But you must not be so bitter in your regret--why
should you be?'
With the woman's instinct to hide she diverged hastily--
'I should have had four years more of your heart than I can ever have
now. Then I should not have wasted my time as I have done--I should
have had so much longer happiness!'
It was no mature woman with a long dark vista of intrigue behind her
who was tormented thus, but a girl of simple life, not yet one-and
twenty, who had been caught during her days of immaturity like a bird
in a springe. To calm herself the more completely, she rose from her
little stool and left the room, overturning the stool with her skirts
as she went.
He sat on by the cheerful firelight thrown from a bundle of green
ash-sticks laid across the dogs; the sticks snapped pleasantly, and
hissed out bubbles of sap from their ends. When she came back she
was herself again.
'Do you not think you are just a wee bit capricious, fitful, Tess?'
he said, good-humouredly, as he spread a cushion for her on the
stool, and seated himself in the settle beside her. 'I wanted to
ask you something, and just then you ran away.'
'Yes, perhaps I am capricious,' she murmured. She suddenly
approached him, and put a hand upon each of his arms. 'No, Angel,
I am not really so--by nature, I mean!' The more particularly to
assure him that she was not, she placed herself close to him in the
settle, and allowed her head to find a resting-place against Clare's
shoulder. 'What did you want to ask me--I am sure I will answer it,'
she continued humbly.
'Well, you love me, and have agreed to marry me, and hence there
follows a thirdly, 'When shall the day be?''
'I like living like this.'
'But I must think of starting in business on my own hook with the
new year, or a little later. And before I get involved in the
multifarious details of my new position, I should like to have
secured my partner.'
'But,' she timidly answered, 'to talk quite practically, wouldn't it
be best not to marry till after all that?--Though I can't bear the
thought o' your going away and leaving me here!'
'Of course you cannot--and it is not best in this case. I want you
to help me in many ways in making my start. When shall it be? Why
not a fortnight from now?'
'No,' she said, becoming grave: 'I have so many things to think of
