“Hardly! You must manage that. I’m sure I’ve done quite enough already.”
They discussed the question as they walked, without coming to any conclusion. Ralston determined to spend the day in looking for a proper person. He could easily withhold his name in every case, until he had made the arrangements. As a matter of fact, it is not hard to find a clergyman under the circumstances, since no clergyman can properly refuse to marry a respectable couple against whom he knows nothing. The matter of subsequent secrecy becomes for him more a question of taste than of conscience.
They reached the door of the Crowdie house, and Katharine turned at the foot of the white stone steps to say good-bye.
“Say you’re glad, Jack dear!” she said suddenly, as she put out her hand, and their eyes met.
“Glad! Of course I’m glad—no, I really am glad now, though I wasn’t at first. It looks different—it looks all right to-day.”
“You don’t look just as I expected you would, though,” said Katharine, doubtfully. “And yet it seems to me you ought—” She stopped.
“Katharine—dear—you can’t expect me to be as enthusiastically happy as though it really meant being married to you—can you?”
“But it does mean it. What else should it mean, or could it mean? Why isn’t it just the same as though we had a big wedding?”
“Because things won’t turn out as you think they will,” answered Ralston. “At least, not soon—uncle Robert won’t do anything, you know. One can’t take fate and destiny and fortune and shuffle them about as though they were cards.”
“One can, Jack! That’s just it. Everybody has one chance of being happy. We’ve got ours now, and we’ll take it.”