A discreet cough—a still distant, but distinctly warning cough—interrupted for a moment. Collins was coming toward us, from the ruins of the old abbey. Maitland Tait looked up and saw him coming, but he did not stop. On the other hand, the sight of his servant seemed to goad him into a hasty precipitation.

"Grace, will you marry me?" he asked.

"Of course!" I managed to say, but not too energetically, for the muscles of my throat were giving me trouble again.

"Soon?" he asked hungrily.

I felt very reckless and—American.

"Before the shadows pass round this dial again, if you insist," I smiled.

But his eyes were very grave.

"Without knowing anything more about me than you know now?"

"Why, I know everything about you," I replied, in some astonishment. "I know that you are the biggest, and the best-looking, and the dearest——"

"You know nothing about me," he interrupted softly, "except what I have told you. I am a working man! I have always had the mass hatred for class, and—and my grandfather was a coal-digger in Wales."