But his demeanor underwent a change as soon as he had passed out of the doorway with Adela. The air of lazy jesting disappeared; his face became earnest, and he walked with a kind of meekness beside the girl, looking at her guardedly with a devotion that did not lose the grace of a single motion of her lithe figure. Leaving the headland, they took the direction of Hunting Quarters, a fishing village several miles distant, where Adela lived alone with her father, a nondescript personage depending for his livelihood upon equally nondescript and fragmentary lore of a supposed medical character. Old Reefe, to say truth, was held in awe by some of the simple neighborhood folk, as a man possessed of mysterious and magical powers.
The two had gone some distance without speaking, when Dennis began abruptly: "I got somethin' to say to ye, Deely, what I was waitin' to say till aunty come back. It didn't seem everyways fair to say it afore."
"What in time is it wouldn't be fair for you to say to me, Dennie?" she asked, turning her face quickly toward him, her lips parted in a smile, or perhaps only in eagerness.
"Why, when you was comin' over, tendin' me and Sylv and the cabin, it didn't look like it was right," Dennis said. "But now there's a free course, and I want to lay for home."
"That's a good word," Adela threw in, seeing him pause.
"Yes, and you know what I'm after. I want ye to say when you'll marry me."
Deely, at this, was quick to avert her glance. She remained silent.
"Well, what's in the wind now?" he persisted. "Ain't ye goin' to pass me an answer?"
"What can I say to you?" she returned, earnestly. "I love you, Dennie, as I told you long ago; and I want to be your wife. But where are we to go? What have we got to live on?"
Adela's speech varied from the customary manner of the locality to a more precise and refined utterance, according to her mood; for she had shared in Sylv's progress to the extent of taking lessons from him in reading. This had caused her to observe Miss Jessie Floyd's pronunciation, and that of the few other cultivated persons whom she occasionally saw, so that she had learned to copy it. The instant she found herself in opposition to Dennis, she unconsciously assumed that superior accent, the effect of which upon him was by no means mollifying.