"How do you know that my name is Esther?" she asks naïvely. "You have never heard any one call me so."
"Do you forget the flyleaf of the Prayer-book that——Hang it! I was on the point of uttering the forbidden name!"
Smiling, he looks for an answering smile from her, but finds none.
"I have heard of you as Esther Craven from my youth up," he continues. "Before you came we speculated as to what 'Esther' Craven would be like; it was only when you arrived in propriá personâ that you rose into the dignity of 'Miss' Craven."
"I hate being called Esther," she says, plaintively, with eyes down-drooped to the lush-green grasses that bow and make obeisance beneath her quick feet; "it always makes me feel as if I were in disgrace. Jack never calls me Esther unless he is vexed with me. Call me Essie, please."
"Essie, then."
"Well?"
"I think it right to warn you" (putting an arm of resolute possession, bolder than ever poor Brandon's had been, round her supple figure—for who is there in these grey evening fields to witness the embrace?)—"I think it right to warn you that I may very possibly grow like Sir Thomas in time; they tell me that I have a look of him already. I do not see that myself; but, even if that does come to pass, can you promise to like me even then?"
"Even then."
"I may very probably d—n the servants, and be upset for a whole evening if there are lumps in the melted butter; I may very probably insist on your playing backgammon with me every evening, and insist, likewise, on your being invariably beaten. Can you bear even that?"