puzzle you here."

"You, Miss Gunn," stoutly answered Dr. Eben, feeling as if he were
taking a header into unfathomed waters. "Me!" exclaimed Hetty, in a tone
of utmost surprise. "Why, what do you mean?"

Dr. Eben hesitated a single instant. He had not intended to do this
thing, but the occasion had been too much for him. "I may as well do it
first as last," he said; "she can but refuse me:" and, in a very few
manly words, Dr. Eben Williams straightway asked Hetty Gunn to marry
him. He was not prepared for what followed, although in a soliloquy,
only a few days before, he had predicted it to himself. Hetty laughed
merrily, unaffectedly, in his very face.

"Why, Dr. Williams!" she said, "you can't know what you're saying. You
can't want to marry me: I'm not the sort of woman men want to marry"--

He interrupted her. His voice was husky with deep feeling.

"Miss Gunn," he said, "I implore you not to speak in this way. I do know
what I am saying, and I do love you with all my heart."

"Nonsense," answered Hetty in the kindliest of tones; "of course you
think you do: but it is only because you have been shut up here two
whole months, with nothing else to do but fancy that you were in love.
I told you it was time we went home. Don't say any thing more about it.
I'll promise you to forget it all," and Hetty laughed again, a merry
little laugh. A sharp suspicion crossed the doctor's mind that she was
coquetting with him. In a constrained tone he said: