"And that you would freely renounce a great fortune to be my wife, the mistress of a modest unluxurious home, such as I am now able to support."
"I think you know that I would be happier with you in a hovel than with any other husband in a palace," she said, in a low sweet voice that thrilled him, and with drooping eyelids, as if she were half ashamed at the boldness of her confession.
"Then break your chains, Rena; fly with the lover who adores you; steal away in the early dawn to-morrow; steal across the park with foot as light and form as graceful as the young fawn's yonder. Meet me at the wicket that opens on the road. I will have a carriage-and-four ready to receive you. I'll whip you up in my arms and carry you off as Jove carried Europa, and we shall be well over the first stage to London before your gaolers discover their captive has escaped. I saw Parson Keith last night; he will be ready to marry us at ten o'clock to-morrow morning, and his ceremonial will be just as binding as if we were married by an archbishop."
"But can I disobey my father, prove myself an ungrateful daughter?" asked Irene, with a distressed air.
She had been woman enough to know that this crisis in her life must come sooner or later; that love would not wait for ever. She had pondered upon this crucial question in many an hour of solitude, and now it had come and must be answered.
"Dear love, you have to choose between that tyrannic father and me," pleaded Herrick, with impassioned earnestness; "the time has come for that choice to be made. I have hung back hitherto, fearful to trust the future; but I am now assured of a literary career and of Sir Robert Walpole's friendship and patronage. I can afford to tempt fortune so far as to take a wife. I am secure of keeping a roof over my darling's head, and that the pinch of poverty shall never be hers."
"I am not afraid of poverty—I only fear to offend my father."
"That is a hazard which must be run, Irene. We have tried to be dutiful, both of us. I addressed him honourably as a suitor for your hand; urged upon him that my prospects were not hopeless, that I was industrious, patient, and had begun to earn my living. He rejected my proposals with contempt, treated me as harshly as ever miserly hidalgo in a Spanish comedy treated his daughter's suitor. If you are ever to be mine, Rena, you must brave your father's anger. You will never be mine with his consent, and 'tis ill waiting for dead men's shoes, saying we will put off our happiness till the old man is in his coffin. Let us be happy in spite of him. When the deed is done, I have a way to win him to forgive us both."
"What way, Herrick?" she asked eagerly.
"That is my secret, which I will reveal only to my wife."