'So much the better, my wayside flower! When you have said all that is sweet and dutiful to her, and have let her know at the same time that you mean to be my wife, come weal come woe, I will see her, and will have my say. I will not promise her a grand career for my darling: but I will pledge myself that nothing of that kind which the world calls evil—no penury, or shabbiness of surroundings—shall ever touch Mary Haselden after she is Mary Hammond. I can promise at least so much as that.'
'It is more than enough,' said Mary. 'I have told you that I would gladly share poverty with you.'
'Sweet! it is good of you to say as much, but I would not take you at your word. You don't know what poverty is.'
'Do you think I am a coward, or self-indulgent? You are wrong, Jack. May I call you Jack, as Maulevrier does?'
'May you?'
The question evoked such a gush of tenderness that he was fain to kneel beside her chair and kiss the little hand holding the cup, before he considered he had answered properly.
'You are wrong, Jack. I do know what poverty means. I have studied the ways of the poor, tried to console them, and help them a little in their troubles; and I know there is no pain that want of money can bring which I would not share willingly with you. Do you suppose my happiness is dependent on a fine house and powdered footmen? I should like to go to the Red River with you, and wear cotton gowns, and tuck up my sleeves and clean our cottage.'
'Very pretty sport, dear, for a summer day; but my Mary shall have a sweeter life, and shall occasionally walk in silk attire.'
That tea-drinking by the fireside in the inn parlour was the most delicious thing within John Hammond's experience. Mary was a bewitching compound of earnestness and simplicity, so humble, so confiding, so perplexed and astounded at her own bliss.
'Confess, now, in the summer, when you were in love with Lesbia, you thought me a horrid kind of girl,' she said, presently, when they were standing side by side at the window, waiting for the coach.