"If I had my wish, darling," he said, "we should be married to-night and
I would carry you away from here forever."

She remembered that Babcock had uttered the same wish on the occasion
when he had offered himself. To grant it then had been out of the
question. To do so now would be convenient--a prompt and satisfactory
blotting out of her past and present life--a happy method of solving
many minor problems of ways and means connected with waiting to be
married. Besides it would be romantic, and a delicious, fitting crowning
of her present blissful mood.

He mistook her silence for womanly scruples, and he recounted with a
little laugh the predicament in which he should find himself on his own
account were they to be so precipitate. "What would my sister think if
she were to get a telegram--'Married to-night. Expect us to-morrow?' She
would think I had lost my senses. So I have, darling; and you are the
cause. She knows about you. I have talked to her about you."

"But she thinks I am Mrs. Babcock."

"Oh yes. Ha! ha! It would never do to state to whom I was married,
unless I sent a telegram as long as my arm. Dear Pauline! She will be
radiant. It is all arranged that she is to stay where she is in the old
quarters, and I am to take you to a new house. We've decided on that,
time and again, when we've chanced to talk of what might happen--of 'the
fair, the chaste and unexpressive she'--my she. Dearest, I wondered if I
should ever find her. Pauline has always said that she would never run
the risk of spoiling everything by living with us."