Introductory material (continued 6)

“I am the best judge of that, Eileen,” replied the young man firmly. “I can see as clearly as you do all the objections you would like to urge. They weigh nothing with me.”

“But your relatives, your friends, Peyton and others,” she cried piteously. “It is true there has been no report in the English papers of that awful thing; I have scanned dozens of them, and found nothing. But there were people at the hotel when it happened. We made no friends, it is true; but we made passing acquaintances when we went abroad who would remember me as Mrs. Quentin.”

His grasp upon her hands tightened. “My darling, have I not told you I know all this, and that it does not in the least alter my purpose? Listen to me! I spent the first twelve years, the most impressionable portion of my early life, in Spain. I have no deep roots in England, no ties, no friendships that it would give me pain to sever. Put Peyton into the scale, a hundred Peytons, and you will outweigh them all. The world is wide; there are yet places where you, the innocent victim of a desperate criminal, have never been. We will go to these places, my darling, and I shall think the world well lost for love.”

For a long time they argued, his insistence growing stronger, her resistance feebler, till, at length, the more resolute will prevailed, and at last, for the first time, their lips met in a long, fervent kiss, a kiss of betrothal.

“I have got it all cut and dried,” he said presently when they had recovered from their emotion. “You will stay here for another week, or a little longer, in order to get through that little matter of Whitefield’s. Then you will come up to London; I will find you some pleasant apartments, and we will be married as soon as possible.”

She was crying unrestrainedly now, but with happiness, not sorrow. “But some day you will repent,” she whispered through her tears.

“Never,” was the fervent answer.

THE END