"Your assumption is wrong. I don't propose to change my name."
"The engagement is off, then."
"Once more," she said, complacently, "error has crept, Weston, into your calculations. Mr. Schloss intends to take my name. He will become Mr. Hillier, and I shall be Mrs. Hillier. And he has an income that will enable me to live in the comfort I was once used to."
"Your handwriting, miss, is so bad that I never guessed he was a German."
Miss Muriel reprimanded me for the criticism of her pen, and for the suggestion concerning her gentleman. Mr. Hillier came out of the room.
"We don't talk to Weston in this manner," he ordered, closing the door behind him. "Weston is one of us. We owe a great deal to her, Muriel, in more ways than one. In fact, we are only just beginning to pay off the indebtedness. Kindly treat her in a proper way."
"She had no right," protested Miss Muriel, "to suggest that he is anything but English."
"I ascertained a while since," said her father, quietly, "that he was naturalised, rather hurriedly, in August of last year. And he has just admitted the circumstances to me."
"Nothing," she declared, in a tragic manner—"not even the extraordinary behaviour of my own people—shall ever part us from each other!"