Derrick was silent for a moment; then he said:

"You shall meet her soon, if you will, dearest. Don't be startled, Celia. I'm going to ask you to do something, a great thing. I am going to ask you to marry me soon, at once. I want you to come back with me."

They had been walking slowly through the wood amongst the trees, his arm round her; she stopped, the blood suffused her face, then she turned pale. She was silent for a moment or two as he looked down at her yearningly, anxiously; then she said in a low voice,

"I will, if you wish it."

He drew her to him, and kissed her pa.s.sionately, gratefully.

"You will, Celia?" he said, astonished at her goodness to him.

"Yes," she said, simply. "Does it seem so great a thing? No, don't answer. I feel mean; for, dearest, I'm only too ready. Oh, it's no use my trying to conceal my love. Think of the time we have been parted, all the months I've been thinking of and longing for you! Why should I refuse to marry you, now, this minute, if I could?"

He was silent, as she lay on his breast, her face upturned to his, her eyes, glowing with woman's tender pa.s.sion and woman's glad surrender, meeting his fearlessly and yet with a little pleading in them, as if she were begging him not to think her immodest.

"I'm not worth such love as yours," said Derrick, his lips drawn straight. "I'm overwhelmed by it. You're too good for me to touch, dearest--and you're going to marry me, to be my wife!"

She laughed at him softly. "Don't put me on too high a pedestal," she said. "I shall tumble off some day and the fall will be so great. I'm just an ordinary girl, whose only merit is that she loves the best, the dearest man in the world. Such a lucky girl, dear!"

"All right," he said, with a laugh that was rather broken. "We'll leave it at that; it's too wild an a.s.sertion to contradict. Though the luck's all on my side, G.o.d knows. Now, let me think--it's hard to think when I'm holding you like this, when my heart's jumping and something's shouting in my ear, 'She's going to be your wife. Your wife!' I don't know much about the business of being married--I've never been married before, you see--but I fancy it's possible to get a special licence. I don't know how you manage it; but I'll find out. Oh, by George! I'll ask our friend, Reggie Rex; he appears to know everything, the human heart included. Dearest, I hope you won't mind: I told him about--ourselves, our happiness, last night. Not that it was necessary to tell him, for, with that weird penetration, acuteness, of his, he guessed it the moment he saw me, when I came back from you."

"I don't mind his knowing," said Celia. "I don't mind anyone knowing; I'm so proud, so happy!"

Derrick bit his lip and was silent for a moment; then he said reluctantly, hesitatingly,

"Celia, will you mind if I ask you, if I tell you that--that there are reasons why I want our engagement, our coming marriage, to be kept secret. Secret between us three."

She looked up at him with slight surprise in her eyes; then she said, after a momentary pause,

"I do not mind. I am sure there are good reasons----"

"Which I'd tell you, I want to tell you," he broke in, frowning; "but I can't. It's a question of honour----"

She put her hand on his lips. "There's no need to say any more. I don't want you to tell me. If it would help you, I will tell you that I guess it is something to do with that--that trouble which brought us together and separated us."

Derrick nodded.

"I understand," she said. "Dearest, shall we come to an agreement about all this? Shall we agree to forget it, to treat it as if it had never happened?" She pressed his arm and, of her own accord, drew closer to him. "Let us pretend that you and I met in the wood yesterday, for the first time."

"Would to G.o.d we had!" he broke out; then he went on, quickly, remorsefully, "No, no, I wouldn't lose that night, our first meeting, in 'the Jail.' That's far too precious a memory, Celia. It was then I fell in love with you, that you wiped out the past, that you gave me back life itself. No, I can't lose that. But we'll forget everything else--for the present, at any rate. Now, let's talk about our--wedding.

I'll get Reggie Rex to help us, and we'll be married as soon as we can.

I shall have done my business in London in a very short time, and we'll start for the ranch as soon as possible. The country is very beautiful, the house, the whole place, is charming; you will like the life----"

She smiled up at him. "Yes, I know. But, Sydney, don't you know that I should like any place, if I lived in it, with you?"

Unconsciously, they had left the wood and were now standing by the gate on the roadway. It was all so still and solitary that they stood, hand in hand, looking at each other and lost to everything else in the world; they were so lost that they did not hear the sound of a carriage coming round the bend of the road; and Lady Gridborough's jingle was upon them before they had time to escape. In the little carriage were her ladyship and Reggie Rex. Celia was the first to see them, and with a faint exclamation and a burning blush, she gripped Derrick's hand, and looked round as if to fly into hiding. But they were standing in a little clearing, and there was no time to get back to the woods. As the jingle came up to them, Lady Gridborough put up her lorgnette and surveyed them,

"Why, bless me!" she said. "That looks like Celia Grant. It is! Who is that with her? Celia!" she called. "Celia!"

Then suddenly her voice faltered, the hand that held the lorgnette shook, her face seemed to stiffen and, in a low voice, she said to Reggie, who had pulled up Turk,

"Drive on! Drive on quickly!"

"Certainly," said Reggie, who had raised his hat to the pair, and was regarding them with a benedictory smile. "But what's the matter?"

"I--I know that young man," said Lady Gridborough. "What is Celia doing with him? She doesn't know----"

"Doesn't know what?" asked Reggie, as he persuaded Turk to resume his amble.

"That he's a very wicked young man; that he has no right to be in her company, to be standing there with her, all alone. Yes; he's a very wicked, unprincipled young fellow."

"Hold on, Lady Gridborough!" said Reggie, blandly. "I must tell you that you're abusing a friend of mine."

"A friend of yours!" said Lady Gridborough. "Well, he was a friend of mine once." She sighed. "He is one no longer; and, if you take my advice, you will have nothing more to do with him."

"There is no person on earth whose advice I value more highly than yours, Lady Gridborough," said Reggie, as blandly as before; "and in most matters, I should accept it and follow it without hesitation; but, in this matter of my friend, Mr. Sydney Green----"

"Mr. Sydney--what?" broke in the old lady, evidently much agitated. "Oh, an alias, of course; yes, I'm not surprised that he should be ashamed of his own name. But, Celia, Celia Grant--oh, it is too sad! I must tell her, warn her."

"My dear Lady Gridborough," said Reggie, smoothly, "I'm going to ask you a great favour."

"What is it?" said Lady Gridborough, glancing over her shoulder at Derrick and Celia in a half-fearsome way. "I can't think of anything else but that young man and--and Celia Grant. Such a dear, sweet girl!"

"My favours concerns both the wicked young man and the dear, sweet girl," said Reggie. "I am going to ask you to refrain from uttering your warning; for two reasons. First, because Miss Grant is in love with him, and wouldn't listen to you--and wouldn't believe you, if she did listen to you; and secondly because, if I may use a vulgarism quite unfit for your aristocratic ears, you will upset the apple-cart."

"Apple-cart!" echoed Lady Gridborough, looking round confusedly. "What apple-cart? I thought for the moment we were going to run into something! You mean that you want me not to speak to Celia, to tell her what I know about your precious--Mr. Sydney Black?"

"Green," corrected Reggie, suavely. "Yes, that's what I want, Lady Gridborough; and I shall be eternally grateful, if you will consent to perform that operation which has. .h.i.therto been considered an impossible one to your s.e.x."

"Operation!" repeated Lady Gridborough, staring at him. "What are you talking about now? What operation?"

"Holding your tongue, dear Lady Gridborough," said Reggie. "Though not fatal, it is always painful; but you really must perform it on this occasion--for Miss Grant's sake, to say nothing of mine."

As the jingle drove on, Derrick and Celia stood watching it in silence.

She had seen the sudden change in Lady Gridborough's manner at sight of Derrick; the old lady's agitation had been too obvious, the cut had been too direct, to be mistaken. Celia's heart ached for her lover, and she could not bring herself to look up at him; but her hand stole into his and grasped it with loving pity and sympathy.

"You see!" said Derrick, with a touch of bitterness. "The man you are going to marry is an outcast and pariah, Celia. That old lady was once a friend. I was fond of her, am fond of her still, and she, I think, was fond of me; but you see how she regards me now. How can I ask you to marry me! I'll give you back your promise, Celia."

"Generous offer refused without thanks," said Celia, trying to speak lightly; then her voice grew grave and sweet, as she said, in a low voice, "Do you think it would make any difference to me if a hundred Lady Gridboroughs, if all the world, turned their backs on you? She does not know what I know; that you are innocent, that you sacrificed yourself, are still sacrificing yourself, for another person?"

"You're speaking about the forged cheque," said Derrick, moodily. "But there's something else. See here, dearest--G.o.d bless you for those sweet words, for your trust in me!--but there's something else. It was not because of the cheque that Lady Gridborough cut me just now--I'm not sure that she knows anything about it--but for something else she thinks me guilty of; something worse than forgery, something unutterably mean and base--Oh, I've got to tell you!"

"Not now," said Celia, resolutely. "If you were to tell me now, I should feel that you think Lady Gridborough's conduct had forced you to do it; and I want you to tell me, if ever you do so, of your own free will."

She paused, then she put her hands on his shoulder and looked up at him, with all her soul in her eyes. "Dearest, don't you know that it is a joy to me to feel that I am trusting you, that I am proving my love for you?

Oh, let it go at that"--how soon she had caught his phrases! "And now come back a little way through the woods with me. And try to forget Lady Gridborough. Why, sir," she went on, with a tender, bewitching playfulness, though her eyes were moist, "you ought not to be thinking of any lady, old or young, but me."

When Derrick got back to the inn, he found Reggie at work on his masterpiece.