"Why will you always doubt me?" he said, at last.
"Because you force me to doubt," she answered, almost patiently, for the ebb-tide of her anger had set in.
"No; it is your own bad temper, which always drives me into teasing you. I have the license in my pocket, and came to settle everything."
"The license!"
At this word Judith turned her face to the moonlight, and Storms saw that his falsehood had done its work.
"While you have been doubting me," he said, with a look and tone of deep injury, "I have been upon my knees almost, persuading the old people to give up this Jessup girl, and take you in her place."
"And they have? Oh, Richard!"
"I came to set the day when you would come to the farm and stop a bit with the old mother."
"Ah!" said Judith, with tears in her eyes, "I cannot remember when I had a mother."
Storms lifted his hand impatiently. Even he shrunk from using the name of his kind old mother as a snare for the girl.