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“Is this a definite offer?” he asked at last.

“Yes,” she answered. Her voice was very low, but it was steady.

He waited a second, and she felt the mastery of the eyes she could not meet.

“Forgive me,” he said, then; “but are you actually in earnest?”

“Yes,” she said again, and marvelled at her own daring.

His hold tightened upon her wrists. “You are a very brave girl,” he said.

There was a baffling note in his tone, and she glanced up involuntarily. To her intense relief she saw the quizzical, kindly look in his eyes again.

“Will you allow me to say,” he said, “that I don’t think you were created for a consolation prize?”

He spoke somewhat grimly, but his tone was not without humour. Molly sat quite still in his hold. She had a feeling that she had grossly insulted him, that she had made it his right to treat her exactly as he chose.

After a moment he set her quietly free.

“I see you are serious,” he said. “If you weren’t–it would be intolerable. But do you actually expect me to take you at your word?”

She did not hesitate. “I wish you to,” she said.

“You think you would be happy with me?” he pursued. “You know, I am called eccentric by a good many.”

“You are eccentric,” said Molly, “or you wouldn’t dream of marrying one of us. As to being happy, it isn’t my nature to be miserable. I don’t want to be a countess, but I do want to help my people. That in itself would make me happy.”

“Thank you for telling me the truth,” Wyverton said, gravely. “I believe I have suspected some of it from the first. And now listen. I asked your sister to marry me–because I wanted her. But I will spoil no woman’s life. I will take nothing that does not belong to me. I shall set her free.”

He paused. Molly was looking at him expectantly. His face softened a little under her eyes.

“As for you,” he said, “I don’t think you quite realize what you have offered me–how much of yourself. It is no little thing, Molly. It is all you have. A woman should not part with that lightly. Still, since you have offered it to me, I cannot and do not throw it aside. If you are of the same mind in six months from now, I shall take you at your word. But you ought to marry for love, child–you ought to marry for love.”

He held out his hand to her abruptly, and Molly, with a burning face, gave him both her own.

“I can’t think how I did it,” she said, in a low voice. “But I–I am not sorry.”

“Thank you,” said Lord Wyverton, and he stooped with an odd little smile, and kissed first one and then the other of the hands he held.

* * * * *

No one, save Phyllis, knew of the contract made on that golden morning in June on the edge of the flowering meadows; and even to Phyllis only the bare outlines of the interview were vouchsafed.

That she was free, and that Lord Wyverton felt no bitterness over his disappointment, he himself assured her. He uttered no word of reproach. He did not so much as hint that she had given him cause for complaint. He was absolutely composed, even friendly.

He barely mentioned her sister’s interference in the matter, and he said nothing whatsoever as to her singular method of dealing with the situation. It was Molly who briefly imparted this action of hers, and her manner of so doing did not invite criticism.

Thereafter she went back to her multitudinous duties without an apparent second thought, shouldering her burden with her usual serenity; and no one imagined for a moment what tumultuous hopes and doubts underlay her calm exterior.