LITMIR.BIZ

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training, and who starts in the race handicapped by being ten years too late!"

      But the dismalness of this panorama raises no answering gloom in the young woman's face. She nods her head gently.

      "I realize it."

      "And this is what I have brought you to, after all these years' waiting," he continues, in a tone of profound regret. "All I can offer you at the end of them is a not particularly genteel poverty, not even a cottage with a double coach-house!" – laughing grimly.

      "I do not want a double coach-house, nor even a single one!" replies Amelia stoutly, and laughing too, a little, through returning tears. "Do not you know that I had rather drive a costermonger's barrow with you than go in a coach and six without you!"

      This is the highest flight of imagination of which Jim has ever known his matter-of-fact Amelia guilty, and he can pay her his thanks for it only in compunctious kisses. Perhaps it is they, perhaps it is the thought which dictates her next hesitating speech, that bring a light into Amelia's tear-reddened eyes.

      "If you will never be better off – " She stops.

      "Yes, dear, go on; 'if I shall never be better off' – I certainly never shall; I feel sure that you will be able to put my earnings for the next ten years into your eye, and see none the worse for them!"

      "If – you – will – never – be – better – off – " she repeats again, more slowly, and breaking off at the same place.

      "Well, dear?"

      "If you will never be better off" – this time she finishes her sentence; but it is rendered almost inaudible by the fact of her flushed face and quivering lips being pressed against his breast – "why should we wait any longer?"

      Why should we wait any longer? To most persons, granted the usual condition of feeling of a betrothed couple, this would seem a very natural and legitimate deduction from the premises; but, strange to say, it comes upon Burgoyne with the shock of a surprise. He has been thinking vaguely of his change of fortune as a cause for unlimited delay, perhaps for the rupture of his engagement, never as a reason for its immediate fulfilment.

      He gives a sort of breathless gasp, which is happily too low for Amelia with her still hidden face to hear. To be married at once! To sit down for all time to Amelia and £800 a year! To forego for ever the thrilling wandering life; the nights under the northern stars, the stealthy tracking of shy forest creatures; the scarce coarse delicious food, the cold, the fatigue, the hourly peril, that, since its probable loss is ever in sight, make life so sweetly worth having – all, in short, that goes to make up so many an Englishman's ideal of felicity; that has certainly hitherto gone to make up Jim's. To renounce it all! There is no doubt that the bitterness of this thought comes first; but presently, supplanting it, chasing it away, there follows another, a self-reproachful light flashing over his past eight years, showing him his own selfishness colossal and complete for the first time. In a paroxysm of remorse, he has lifted Amelia's face, and, framing it with his hands, looks searchingly into it.

      "I believe," he says in a shaken voice, "that you would have married me eight years ago, on my pittance, if I had asked you!"

      No "Yes" was ever written in larger print than that which he read in her patient pale eyes. Even at this instant there darts across him a wish that they were not quite so pale, but he detests himself for it.

      "And I never suspected it!" he cries compunctiously. "I give you my word of honour, I never suspected it! I thought you looked upon my poverty in as prohibitory a light as I did myself."

      "I do not call it such great poverty," replies Amelia, her practical mind resuming its habitual sway over her emotions. "Of course, it is an income that would require a little management; but if we cut our coat according to our cloth, and did not want to move about too much, we might live either in a not very fashionable part of London, or in some cheap district in the country very comfortably."

      Despite his remorse, a cold shiver runs down Burgoyne's spine at the picture that rises, conjured up with too much distinctness by her words, before his mind's eyes; the picture of a snug Bayswater villa, with a picturesque parlour-maid, or the alternative cottage in some dreary Wiltshire or Dorsetshire village, with a shrubbery of three aucuba bushes, and a kitchen-garden of half an acre. It may be that, her frame being in such close proximity to his, she feels the influence of his shiver, and that it suggests her next sentence, which is in a less sanguine key.

      "But it would not be fair; it would be asking you to give up too much."

      The meek abnegation of her rather worn voice brings his remorse uppermost again on the revolving wheel of his feelings.

      "Is not it my turn to give up something?" he asks tenderly; "and besides, it is time for me to settle! I am – I am tired of wandering!"

      As this atrocious lie passes his lips, he catches his breath. Tired of the Sierras! Tired of the bivouacs among the dazzling snow! Tired of the august silence of the ever-lasting hills! Heaven forgive him for saying so! Perhaps there is no great air of veracity in his assertion, for she looks at him distrustfully; so distrustfully that he reshapes his phrase: "At least, if I am not, I ought to be!"

      But still she gazes at him with a wistful and doubting intentness.

      "If I could only believe that that was true!"

      "It is true," replies he, evading her look; "at least, true enough for all working purposes; we all know that life is a series of compromises, a balancing of gain and loss. I shall lose something, I do not deny that, but I gain more – I gain you!"

      "That is such a mighty gain, is it not?" she says with a melancholy smile, as that intuition of the truth which sometimes comes to unloved or tepidly loved women flashes upon her.

      "A matter of taste – a mere matter of taste!" rejoins he hurriedly; aware of the unreal ring in his own words, and trying, with all his might, to feel as well as speak light-heartedly.

      She shakes her head in a way which tells him how poorly he has succeeded. In a desperate if not very well-judged attempt to convince her of his sincerity, his next speech is uttered.

      "Why should not we be married at once? to-morrow? the day after to-morrow? at the Consulate – of course there is a Consulate – or the English church; I suppose there are half a dozen English churches. Why not? We have nothing to wait for, and we are both of age!"

      He has had no unkindly intention in the last words, but the moment that these are out of his mouth, a glance at Amelia's unblooming face and unyouthful figure tell him that they were not happily chosen. At the first instant that the suggestion of an immediate marriage reaches the hearer's brain, it sends a dart of joy over her features. To be married at once! To put an end for ever to the interminable waiting, to enter at last – at last upon the possession of the so long deferred Canaan. But in a second, that first bright flash is chased away, and gives place to a look of almost humiliation.

      "You must be making fun of me, to suggest such a thing!" she says in a wounded voice; "you know how wildly impossible it would be that I should leave them all – my father – Sybilla – without any preparation."

      "Without any preparation!" replies Jim, raising his eyebrows. "Have not you been preparing them for the last eight years?"

      He feels a vague unjust irritation with her for opposing his proposition, though deep down in his heart he knows that he would have felt a much greater annoyance had she eagerly closed with it. As she does not answer a question, which the moment that it is uttered he feels to have been rather brutal, he goes on, against his will, in the same sarcastic key:

      "I am afraid that you will have to leave them all some day; I am afraid that our Bayswater mansion – by-the-bye, I am sure it will not be a mansion, for I am sure it will not have a back-door – will not be likely to contain all. Your father – Sybilla – Sybilla and her physic bottles take up a good deal of room, do not they?"

      It is fortunate for Amelia that she is too preoccupied by the thought of her own next speech to take in the full acerbity of the last remark.

      "If you would consent to wait till we get home – father does not mean to stay in Italy beyond the end of next month

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