"And whether he loves you?"
"Yes."
"Of course you do. You can't help knowing it. Nobody could. And if," proceeded Patty sternly, fixing the fatuous countenance of the man in the moon with a baleful eye, "if, under those circumstances, you don't accept him, you deserve to be a miserable, lonely woman for all the rest of your wretched life. That's my opinion if you ask me for it."
Elizabeth looked at the sea in tranquil contemplation for a few seconds. Then she told Patty the story of her perplexity from the beginning to the end.
"Now what would you do?" she finally asked of her sister, who had listened with the utmost interest and intelligent sympathy. "If it were your own case, my darling, and you wanted to do what was right, how would you decide?"
"Well, Elizabeth," said Patty; "I'll tell you the truth. I should not stop to think whether it was right or wrong."
"Patty!"
"No. A year ago I would not have said so—a year ago I might have been able to give you the very best advice. But now—but now"—the girl stretched out her hands with the pathetic gesture that Elizabeth had seen and been struck with once before—"now, if it were my own case, I should take the man I loved, no matter what he was, if he would take me."
Elizabeth heaved a long sigh from the bottom of her troubled heart. She felt that Patty, to whom she had looked for help, had made her burden of responsibility heavier instead of lighter. "Let us go up to the house again," she said wearily. "There is no need to decide to-night."
When they reached the house, they found Eleanor gone to bed, and the gentlemen sitting on the verandah together, still talking of Mr. Yelverton's family history, in which the lawyer was professionally interested. The horses were in the little buggy, which stood at the gate.