“I don’t care where we are,” he declared. “I have got to go on now. Lois, will you marry me?”
“Is this a proposal?” She laughed nervously.
“Sounds like it,” he admitted.
She was silent for several moments. Into her eyes there had come something of that look which had sent Lady Mary into her room to write to Captain Vandermere, and bid him come without delay. The color had gone. She seemed suddenly older—tired.
“Oh, I don’t know!” she said. “I think I should like to, but I can’t!—no, I can’t!”
They began to descend the hill. He kept his arm in hers.
“Why not?” he asked. “Don’t you care for me?”
“I—I don’t know,” she answered. “I don’t know whether I care for anybody. Wait, please. Don’t speak to me for several moments.”
Their path skirted the side of a ploughed field, and then through a little gate they passed into a long, straggling plantation. Directly she was under the shelter of the trees, she burst into tears.