"How old are you?" he asked abruptly, at last.
"I shall be nineteen in three weeks," she answered.
"You are sure you won't be twenty-one?"
"I'm sure I shan't. Why?"
"Because if you are only nineteen, I cannot carry you off and marry you, love, which would have been the simplest way out of it."
"I should not like that way," whispered Rachel. "It would be a wrong way."
"Yes, dear—except as a last resource. Of course we would try all the other ways first. But we must have our rights, you know. If they won't give them, we must take them—we must get them as we can."
"Cannot we be married until I am twenty-one?" she queried timidly.
"Not without your guardian's consent. Is there any chance of my getting that, or any kind of toleration even, if I call on him at his office to-morrow and use all the eloquence at my command?"
"No. Aunt Elizabeth won't let him have anything to do with it."