If he let Uncle Elbert's daughter go like this, he might as well put the
_Cypriani_ about at once for New York, for he knew that he would never
have the chance to talk with her again. With engaging young
friendliness which overrode reserve, she had been moved to ask his
confidence, and he had angered her, even hurt her feelings, it seemed,
by appearing to withhold it. In return she had thrown down the issue
before him, immediate and final. Abstract questions of morals, and there
were new ones of great seriousness now, would have to wait. Should he
allow her to think that he was another man, or should he bid her
good-bye and abandon his errand?

There was no alternative: she had made that unmistakable. His oath to
her father came suddenly into his mind. After all, was it not a little
absurd to boggle over one small deception when the whole enterprise, as
now suddenly revealed, was to be nothing but one continuous and colossal
one?

"Miss--Miss Carstairs," said Varney, "with _you_ I shall not argue this.
I am going to let you think I am whoever you want. We needn't say
anything more about it, need we? Only--I'll ask you to call me by the
name I gave you, please, and, so far as you can, to regard me that way.
Is that--a bargain?"

Mary Carstairs stood at the threshold of the lighted room, looking at
him from under her wide white hat, eyes shining, lips smiling, cheeks
faintly flushed with a sense of the triumph she had won.

"Of course," she said. "And I don't think you'll need ever be sorry for
having trusted me--_Mr. Varney!"_