She did not see, but sat there, a rueful picture, with fifty golden sovereigns on the table beside her and all her worldly possessions in a little unopened parcel. A terrible fear of the return to the gloomy house in Hampstead consumed her. Her eyes filled with tears.
"I will never go back," she said coldly; "if you do not want me, Harry, I will go where no one shall ever see me again. If you love me, why cannot you marry me? I am ready to go to the priest this instant. _He_ said it was all d----d palaver, but I do not refuse to go because of that. Take me now, and I will be your little gipsy wife. Do you not wish it, Harry?"
Of course he wished it, and yet what should he say to her? Being a mere man and knowing something of such a nature as this, her threat had a meaning he did not dare to ignore. What if she refused to go to London with him? Would people blame him? He heard already the horrible malice of those who would declare that he had decoyed her from her home. The world, so far as it concerned him, would say that he was a scoundrel; his whole life had taught him to care for such censure when the greater issues were at stake. Oh! she had put him in a pretty fix; and yet he loved her and had discovered that he could not leave her though ten thousand railed upon him.
"Don't you understand, Gipsy," he protested in despair, "these things cannot be done just like that? I'm going to marry you, and no one alive shall stop me. But I can't do it in five minutes. We shall have to get a licence and swear we've lived in Brighton heaven knows how long. Then there's the church people to see--and, of course, the Silvesters must know. It would be shabby to keep them in the dark. My dearest, why do you cry? Don't you see I can't make it different just because I love you? Won't you understand?"
"More than anything on earth, little Gipsy. So help me God! it's true. I couldn't leave you now if I wanted to. Put your arms round my neck and tell me you believe it. There, just like that--and don't say another word about going away, or I don't know what will happen to you."
He pulled her on to his knees and held her close to him. She had twenty schemes in her head, but the one she liked best was the suggestion that her fifty pounds would bribe the priest to an immediate ceremony. For herself, the thing was of little account. _He_ had taught her that it did not matter as long as a man loved a woman, and beyond that was a knowledge of the world almost terrible in its savage conceptions of right and wrong.