“Two thousand, one hundred and eleven pounds. There are some shillings and pence, too, I believe. I went into it all with the lawyer.”
“How fortunately it has happened,” said Isoline fervently, her eyes looking onward to the wintry horizon.
He was thinking the same thing. All at once, out of the silence that fell between them, there swam up before him the solemnity of what he meant to undertake. It was for all his life, probably, and for hers too. A vague foreshadowing of the buffets of the world, of time, of chance, of fate, played across his mind. He turned to her, a wave of tenderness in his heart, and looked down into her perplexed face.
“If you will do this thing,” he said, “I will try always to make up to you for what I have asked.”
She looked straight in front of her.
“But I have not decided,” she said, almost petulantly; “how can I all at once?”
“This is likely to be my last and only chance of talking to you,” he pleaded; “if we settle anything we must do it to-day. You could not see me if I came; that is the difficulty.”
She shook her head. “Not if your father makes all this fuss.”
“And writing would not be safe. So you see we must think it out now. Heaven knows when we may meet again.”