She drew a long breath of evident relief.

"Then you'll tell your uncle--"

"Anything you like!" he answered. "By-the-bye, oughtn't he to be
home by this time?"

"He may have been kept by some business," she said--"He won't be
long now. You'll say we're engaged?"

"Yes."

"And perhaps"--went on Innocent--"you might ask him not to have
the banns put up yet as we don't want it known quite so soon--"

"I'll do all I can," he replied, cheerily--"all I can to keep him
quiet, and to make you happy! There! I can't say more!"

Her eyes shone upon him with a grateful tenderness.

"You are very good, Robin!"

He laughed.

"Good! Not I! But I can't bear to see you fret--if I had my way
you should never know a moment's trouble that I could keep from
you. But I know I'm not a patch on your old stone knight who wrote
such a lot about his 'ideal'--and yet went and married a country
wench and had six children. Don't frown, dear! Nothing will make
me say he was romantic! Not a bit of it! He wrote a lot of