She sat up in the chair as though pulling herself together in some sudden resolve, and looked me straight in the face.
"Jack," she said, "why should we wait?"
"To be sure," said I. "Only I do not want you to marry a pauper if any act of my own can make him better than a pauper in the meantime."
"You temporize," she said, bitterly. "You are not glad. Yet you came to me only last spring, and you—"
"I come to you now, Miss Grace," I said.
"Ah, what a difference between then and now!" she sighed.
For a time we could find nothing fit to say. At last I was forced to bring up one thing I did not like to mention.
"Miss Grace," said I, seating myself beside her, "last night, or rather this morning, after midnight, I found a man prowling around in the yard."
She sprang up as though shocked, her face gray, her eyes full of terror.
"You have told!" she exclaimed, "My father knows that Captain Orme—"