"How could that be?" she asked. "What is left for me now, but to go quietly to my grave?"
"Grave!" said Tom. "Who talks of graves for twenty years to come! Mary, my darling, I have waited for you so long and faithfully, you will not disappoint me at last?"
"What do you mean? What can you mean?"
"Mean!" said he; "why, I mean this, cousin: I mean you to be my wife—to come and live with me as my honoured wife, for the next thirty years, please God!"
"You are mad!" she said. "Do you know what you say? Do you know who you are speaking to?"
"To my old sweetheart, Polly Thornton!" he said, with a laugh,—"to no one else in the world."
"You are wrong," she said; "you may try to forget now, but you will remember afterwards. I am not Mary Thornton. I am an old broken woman, whose husband was transported for coining, and hung for murder and worse!"
"Peace be with him!" said Tom. "I am not asking who your husband was; I have had twenty years to think about that, and at the end of twenty years, I say, my dear old sweetheart, you are free at last: will you marry me?"
"Impossible!" said Mary. "All the country-side knows who I am. Think of the eternal disgrace that clings to me. Oh, never, never!"
"Then you have no objection to me? eh, cousin?"