His face grew dusky red, his eyes shone, he looked at her as if he sought to read her soul.
'Do you know what you are saying, Gladys? If you go, it can only be in one way—as my wife.'
'Well?'
She took a long breath, but was allowed to say no more until a long time after, when she raised her face from her lover's breast, and demanded that he should take her home.
'It is an awful thing we have done, Gladys,' he said, touching her dear head for the twentieth time, and looking down into her eyes, which were luminous with the light of love,—'an awful thing for me, at least. We shall have to flee the country, and they will say I have abducted the heiress of Bourhill.'
'Oh, do! Run off with me, as the Red Reiver and all these nice, interesting sort of people used to do long ago. Let us abscond, and not tell a single living soul, except the faithful Teen.'
But Walter shook his head.
'It is what I should like to do above everything, but I must resist the temptation. No, my darling; for your sake, everything must be most scrupulously conventional, if a little hurried. I shall pay your guardian a visit to-morrow morning, which will somewhat astonish him.'
Gladys looked at him with a sudden access of admiration. To hear him speak in that calm, masterful tone pleased her as nothing else could have done.
'But you won't let them frighten you, and abscond without me? That would be too mean,' she said saucily.