"Yes. Yes—I do beg of you, dearest. Not, we will say, for another day. After that——," he drew a long breath, and brushed the hair from his forehead impatiently. "I will explain then why I ask you, dearest. I will explain everything. Don't—don't—be frightened, dearest! Don't think there is any real mystery! You will—yes, you will laugh, when you hear what it is!"
"Shall I?" she says, trustfully. "I am not frightened, I am not even—I think—very curious——."
"Oh, my darling! And you do not even ask me why this secrecy, this concealment, is necessary?"
"No," she says, after a pause, and placing her other hand in his. "If you say so I am content. I suppose——," she averts her face a little—"I suppose you do not wish your people to know that—-that you are going to marry one so far beneath you, one so unfit to be a duchess——."
He stifles a groan.
"It is not that," he says. But for his promise to the duke he could tell her all. Tell her that he is not a duke with lands and gold galore, but a poor man so incumbered and crippled by debt that he dare not let it be known that he is not going to marry a fortune! "Leslie, I cannot tell you! I am not free to tell you, till—yes, to-morrow! Will you not trust me?"
Her breath comes fast for a moment as she looks out to sea, then she turns to him.
"I cannot but trust you," she says almost piteously. "I could not doubt you if I tried."
"My angel, my dearest!" he says, fervently, reverently. "You shall never regret having trusted me, never! Now, listen, Leslie! There is one person, of all others, who must not know what we are going to do—Mr. Temple."
"Mr. Temple?" she says, not suspiciously, not even curiously but with faint surprise.