Where young ladies are concerned, logic does not carry all before it, and so Mary opposed all manner of feminine sentiments, and ended by saying she could not do such a thing.

Then Walter began to be mortified and angry; then she cunningly shifted the responsibility, and said she would consult Mrs. Easton.

“Then consult her in my presence,” said Walter.

Mary had not bargained for that; she had intended to secure Mrs. Easton on her side, and then take her opinion.  However, as Walter’s proposal was fair, she called Mrs. Easton, and they put the case to her, and asked her to give her candid opinion.

Mrs. Easton, however, took alarm at the gravity of the proposal, and told them both she knew things that were unknown to both of them, and it was not so easy for her to advise.

“Well, but,” said Walter, “if you know more than we do, you are the very person that can advise.  All I know is that if we are not married now, I shall have to wait six months at least, and if I stay here Mr. Bartley and I shall quarrel, and he will refuse me Mary; and if I go abroad again I shall 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.