"I was just coming to see you, Yanna. May I walk home with you? Or has your father forbidden you to receive my visits?"
"That would be very unlike father, Harry. He leaves your visits to your own sense of honor; and to my loyalty to his wishes. I think he can trust both."
"I have been so utterly wretched since I saw you last, my dear."
"Yanna, I am going into a life full of excitement and temptation. Will you not straighten me for it by the promise I ask for?"
"How could I? You know what a state of turmoil we have been in. But just as soon as we are settled in New York, I mean to have a good talk with mother about our marriage."
"Then if she is willing for our engagement--our public engagement--you can come and tell father so; and you know how happy I shall be."
"If our engagement should be made known in Woodsome, do you think it would reach New York?"
"Yes. Half a dozen of our Woodsome families are in New York some part of every winter. But that is not the question. What cannot be known in New York cannot be known in Woodsome. I should not like my Woodsome friends to believe we were engaged, if in New York they constantly met you behaving as if we were not engaged. If you have any imagination, you can see what a painful position a half-engagement would put me in."
"Now, Yanna, you are getting impossible again. You will not do anything to meet me. In disagreements, people generally each 'give in' a little."
"Not on such a question as this. I will have all of love's honor and service, or I will have none of it. I hate secrecy in anything, I fear it in love. Besides, my father says, it is a wrong to me. His decision includes mine, Harry."
"Then I suppose my visit is utterly useless. Mother said it would be."
"So you _have_ been talking to Mrs. Filmer again?"
"Oh! you do press a poor distracted man so hardly! Mother talked to me. And she seems a little bitter about you. What did you say to her, Yanna?"
"Of course, I shall work with all my power to get our engagement on a footing to please you, Yanna. But you know, a mother is a mother, and it is hard to go against her when she is working for the good of your sister, and your family, and all that; and----"
"Our engagement! We are not engaged!" They were at the door by this time, and Yanna said: "Will you come in, Harry?"