"Yes; I can dance."
"Why, then--not to enter on other desirable qualities--you are an accomplished young lady. What do you mean about unfitness?"
"I see you are laughing at me," she said, the tears struggling to her eyes again. "I am so very poor; I teach for the merest trifle: it barely finds me in the cheapest clothes. I only looked forward to a life of work. And you are rich--at least Mr. Thornycroft is."
"If we have a superfluity of riches, there's all the more cause for me to dispense with them in a wife. Besides, when I set up my tent, it will not be on the scale of my father's house. Anna, my darling!" he added, with a strange gravity in his eye and tone, "we are more on an equality than you may deem."
She made no reply, having enough to do to keep her tears from falling.
"I have sufficient for comfort--a sort of love-in-a-cottage establishment," went on Isaac; "and I am heartily sick of my bachelor's life. It leads me into all sorts of extravagances, and is unsatisfactory at the best. You must promise to be my wife, Anna."
"There are the lights in Captain Copp's parlour," said she, with singular irrelevance.
"Just so. But you do not go in until I have your promise."
"They were saying one day, some of them--I think it was Mrs. Connaught--that you would be sure to marry into one of the good county families," murmured Anna.
"Did they? I hope the disappointment won't be too much for them. I shall marry you, Anna, and none other."