But the time for this was not yet. He must first carry out one of the most daring plans ever conceived by man to elope with an unwilling beauty and make her his by sheer force of fraud and impudence.
And the worst of it all lay before him.
He was succeeding well in his plan for getting her to the ferry, but after that, how was he to manage?
[CHAPTER XXVI.]
TOO LATE! TOO LATE.
"'What is life?'
A battle, child,
Where the strongest lance may fail,
Where the weariest eye may be beguiled,
And the stoutest heart may quail,
Where foes are gathered on every hand,
And rest not day or night
But the angels of heaven are on thy side,
And God is over all."
When Robert returned from the engine-house, he was in doubt whether he ought to follow Hawthorne or not.
"If he has gone to Miss Harding's house, everything must be all right between them. It must be some other lady in the same house that Standish is going to take away. It's a lodging-house, and he may be acquainted with a dozen ladies there, for all I know."
But still, in spite of these thoughts, he kept on driving to the house.