absolutely safe with me. I haven't much to offer you, I admit. I'm as
poor as a church mouse. But at least you would find me"--he smiled into
her startled eyes--"a very easy-going husband, I assure you."

"Oh, I don't know!" Doris said. "I don't know!"

Yet still she left her hands in his and still she listened to him. That
airy reference of his to his poverty affected her favourably. He would
scarcely have made it, she told herself, with an unconscious effort to
silence unacknowledged misgivings, if her fortune had been the sole
attraction.

"Look here," he said, breaking in upon these hasty meditations, "I don't
want you to do anything in a hurry. Take a little while to think it
over. Let me know to-morrow. I am not leaving till the evening. You
shall do nothing, so far as I am concerned, against your will. I want
you, now and always, to do exactly as you like. You believe that?"

"I quite believe you mean it at the present moment," she said with a
decidedly doubtful smile.

"It will be so always," said Brandon, "whether you believe it or not."

And with considerable ceremony he raised her hands to his lips and
deliberately kissed them. It seemed to Doris at that moment that even so
headlong a scheme as this was not without its very material advantages.
There were so many drawbacks to being betrothed.