"Then I'll tell you." And he told her. "Em, I can keep silence no longer. I must tell your uncle all. And if he forbids me--"
"I don't mind saying," she observed, taking advantage of the pause, "that I don't care if he does."
"What do you mean?"
"John," she whispered.
"Call me Jack."
"No; it's so undignified for a clergyman." Some people would call it undignified for a young woman to lay her hand on a clergyman's shoulder. "What do I care if he says no? He never does say what he means the first time. I can just turn him round my finger. Whatever he said to you he would never dare to say no to me; at least, when I had done with him."
"Let us hope so," said Mr. Roland. "But whatever happens, I feel that I have already been too long silent."
"I don't know," murmured Em, with a saintlike expression in her eyes. "I rather like meeting you upon the sly."
Mr. Roland, as a curate and so on, perceived this to be a sentiment in which, under any circumstances, it was impossible for him to acquiesce--at least, verbally.
"No," he declared; "it must not be. This is a matter in which delay is almost worse than dangerous. I must go to him at once and tell him all."