"No, my darling," he said, "I would not ask you to do anything wrong. It may be a little unconventional, this stolen half-hour of ours—perhaps it is; but what do you and I care for the conventional? It is our happiness we care for," and he smiled up at her.
It was a dangerously subtle argument for a girl of nineteen, and coming from the man she loved, but it sufficed for Stella, who scarcely knew the full meaning of the term "conventional," but, nevertheless, she looked down at him with a serious light in her eye.
"I wonder if Lady Lenore would have done it," she said.
A cloud like a summer fleece swept across his face.
"Lenore?" he said, then he laughed. "Lenore and you are two very different persons, thank Heaven. Lenore," and he laughed, "worships the conventional! She would not move a step in any direction excepting that properly mapped out by Mrs. Grundy."
"You would not ask her, then?" said Stella.
He smiled.
"No, I should not," he said, emphatically and significantly. "I should not ask anyone but you, my darling. Would you wish me to?"
"No, no," she said hastily, and she laughed.