couldn't help asking, "What has happened to Elizabeth?" But the others
had not observed anything unusual.

Carl Beck, contrary to his custom, came not on the following Saturday,
but before it, in the middle of the week; and he strode with hasty steps
through the rooms when he didn't see Elizabeth.

He found her at last up-stairs. She was standing gazing out of the
window on the landing, out of which all that was to be seen was the
wooded slope of the hill and the sky above it. She heard his step--she
knew that he was coming up-stairs--and felt a sudden indefinable sense
of apprehension--a sort of panic almost--as if she could have jumped out
of the window. What should she answer?

When he came and put his arm round her waist, and asked in a low voice,
"Elizabeth, will you be mine?" she felt, for the first time in her life,
on the point of fainting. She hardly knew what she did, but pushed him
involuntarily away from her.

He seized her hand afresh, and asked, "Elizabeth, will you be my wife?"

She was very pale, as she answered--"Yes!"

But when he wanted again to take her by the waist, she sprang suddenly
back, and looked at him with an expression of terror.

"Elizabeth!" he said, tenderly, and tried again to approach her, "what
is the matter with you? If you only knew how I have longed for this
moment."