"But what would your family say? Your father--your sister?"
"Just what they pleased. Anna, pardon me, I am only teasing you. Believe me, they will only be too glad to hear of it; glad that the wild, unsteady (as Mary Anne is pleased to call me on occasion) Isaac Thornycroft should make himself into a respectable man. Anna! can you not trust me?"
She had trusted all her life, yielded implicitly to the sway of those who held influence over her; little chance was there, then, that she could hold out now. Isaac Thornycroft received the promise his heart hungered for, and sealed it.
Her face gathered against his breast; her slight form shrinking in his strong arms; he kept her there a prisoner; his voice breathing soft love-vows; his blue eyes bent greedily on her blushing face; his kisses, the only honest kisses his life had known, pressed again and again upon her lips.
"Who on earth is that? Avast, thieves! Bea serpents! pirates!"
The gallant Captain Copp, his night-glass pushed out at the open window to an acute angle, had been contemplating these puzzling proceedings for some time. Fortunately he did not distinguish very clearly, and remained ignorant of the real matter. Ill-conditioned people, tipsy fishermen and else, their brains muddled with drink, found their way to the heath on occasion, and the captain considered it a duty to society to order them off. Sweeping the horizon and the nearer plain to-night, his glass had shown him some object not easy to make out. The longer Captain Copp waited for it to move, the longer it stayed stationary; the more he turned his glass, the less chance did it appear to give of revealing itself. Naturally, two people in close proximity, the head of the taller one bent over the other so as to leave no indication of the human form, would present a puzzling paradox when viewed through a night-glass: the captain came to the conclusion that it was the most extraordinary spectacle ever presented to his eyes since they had looked on that sea serpent in the Pacific; and he raised his voice to hail it when suspense was becoming quite unbearable.
Isaac Thornycroft, adroitly sheltering his companion, glided up the little opening by Mrs. Connaught's. In a few minutes, when the captain had drawn his head and glass in for a respite, he walked boldly up to the door by the side of Anna.
"Good evening, captain."
"Good evening," blithely responded the captain. "Sorry you should have the trouble of bringing her home. Come in, Anna. I say, did you meet any queer thing on the heath?"
"Queer thing?" responded Isaac.