When Walter, in ungovernable excitement, trouble, and impatience, rushed out of the house in the morning, leaving old Crockford to make he knew not what revelations to his father, he had no idea either what he was going to do, or how long it might be before he returned home. It might have been that he was leaving the Hook—his birthplace, the only home he had ever known—for years. He might never see all these familiar things again—the pale river winding round the garden, the poplar-tree, thin and naked, in the wind, the little multitude in the dining-room making a hum and murmur of voices as he darted past. In his imagination he saw so clearly that breakfast-table—his mother dividing to each of the children their proper share, Ally and Anne, and little Molly, with her spoon, making flourishes, and calling, “Fader, fader!” He saw them all with the distinctness of inward vision as he darted away, though his mind was full of another image. The pang with which, even in the heat of his flight, he realized that he was going away, lay in the background of his heart, as that picture was in the background of his imagination; foremost was the idea of seeing her at once, of telling her that all was over here, and that he was ready to fly to the end of the world if she would but come with him, and that all should be as she pleased. He had forgotten the suggestion of last night about the oath which he would have to take as to his age. Nothing was apparent to him except that his secret was betrayed, that all was over, that she alone remained to him, and that nothing now stood between him and her. He rushed up the hill to the cottage, feeling that reserves and concealments were no longer necessary, that the moment of decision was come, and that there must be no more delay. He would not wait any longer patrolling about the house till she should see him from a window or hear his signal. He went up to the cottage door and knocked loudly. He must see her, and that without a moment’s delay.

It seemed to Walter that he stood a long time knocking at the cottage door. He heard the sound of many goings and comings within, so that it was not because they were absent that he was not admitted. At last the door was opened suddenly by old Mrs. Crockford, who was deaf, and who made no answer to his demand except by shaking her head and repeating the quite unnecessary explanation that she was hard of hearing, backed by many courtesies and inquiries for the family.

“My master’s out, Mr. Walter—Crockford’s not in, sir; he’s gone to work, as he allays does. Shall I send him, sir, to the ’ouse when he comes in to ’is dinner?” she said, with many bobs and hopes as how her ladyship and all the family were well.

Whether this was all she knew, or whether the old woman was astute, and brought her infirmity to the aid of her wits, he could not tell.

“I want to see your niece,” he said—“your niece—your niece Emmy: I want to see Emmy,” without eliciting any further reply than, “My master’s out, Mr. Walter, and I’m a little ’ard of ’earing, sir.”

He raised his voice so that she must have heard him, and surely, surely, in the condition in which things were, ought to have answered him! But perhaps she was anxious to keep up appearances still. He said, in his loudest voice, “I am leaving home; I must see her;” but even this produced no response: and at last he was obliged to go away, feeling as if all the machinery of life had come to a stand-still, and that nothing remained for him to do. He had abandoned one existence, but the other did not take him up. He roamed about, for he scarcely knew how long, till the wintery sun was high in the sky, then came back, and, in the audacity of despair—for so he felt it—knocked again, this time softly, disguising his impatience, at the cottage door. He had acted wisely, it appeared, for she herself opened to him this time, receding from the door with a startled cry when she saw who it was. But this time he would not be put off. He followed her into the little room in front, which was a kind of parlor, adorned by the taste of Martha and her mother, cold, with its little fire-place decked out in cut paper, and the blind drawn down to protect it from the sun. He caught sight of a box, which seemed to be half packed, and which she closed hastily and pushed away.

She turned upon him when he had followed inside this room, with an angry aspect that made poor Walter tremble. “Why do you hunt me down like this?” she cried; “couldn’t you see I didn’t want you when you came this morning pushing your way into the house? Though it’s a cottage, still it’s my castle if I want to be private here!”

“Emmy!” cried the youth, with the keenest pang of misery in his voice.

“Why do you call out my name like that? You objected to what I told you last night. Go away now. I don’t want to have anything to say to a man that objects to my plans as if I didn’t know what’s right and what’s wrong!”

“I object to nothing,” said the boy. “You sent me away from you, you gave me no time to think. And now my father knows everything, and I have left home; I shall never go back any more.”

“Left home! And how does your father know everything? And what is there to know?”

“Nothing!” cried Walter—“nothing, except that I am yours, heart and soul—except that I desire nothing, think of nothing, but you. And they had never heard of you before!”

She closed the door and pushed a chair toward him. “How did they know about me?—what do they know now? Was it you that told them? And what do they think?” she cried, with a slight breathlessness that told of excitement.

Poor Walter was glad to sit down, he was faint and weary; that rush out-of-doors into the frosty air without any breakfast, which had affected the imaginations of his family so much, had told on him. He felt that there was no strength in him, and that he was glad to rest.

“It was old Crockford who told them,” he said. “He came in upon me this morning like a—like a wolf: and my father of course heard, and came to see what it was.”

“Oh,” she said, in a tone of disappointment, not without contempt in it, “so it was not you! I thought perhaps, being so overwhelmed by what I said, you had gone right off and told your mother, as a good boy should. So it was only old Crockford? and I gave you the credit! But I might have known,” she added, with a laugh, “you had not the courage for that!”

“Courage! I did not think of it,” he said. “It did not seem a thing to tell them. How was I to do it? And Crockford came—I don’t know what for—to forbid me the house.”

“No; but to drive me out of it!” she said, with a look which he did not understand. “So you hadn’t the courage,” she said. “You have not much courage, Mr. Walter Penton, to be such a fine young man. You come here night after night, and you pretend to be fond of me. But when it comes to the point you daren’t say to your father and mother straight out, ‘Here’s a girl I’m in love with, and I want to marry her. I’ll do it as soon as I’m old enough, whether you like it or not; but if you were nice, and paid a little attention to her, it would be better for us all.’ That is what I should have said in your place. But you hadn’t the heart, no more than you’d have had the heart to run a little risk about your age and say you were six months older than you are. That’s like a man! You expect a girl to run every risk, to trust herself to you and her whole life; but to do anything that risks your own precious person, oh, no! You have not the heart of a mouse; you have not the courage for that!”

She spoke with so much vehemence, her eyes flashing, the color rising in her cheeks, that Walter could not say a word in his defense—and, besides, what was there to say? So far was he from having the courage to broach the subject in his own person, that when it had been begun by Crockford he had not been able to bear it, but had rushed away. He sat silent while she thus burst forth upon him, gazing at her as she towered over him in her indignation. He had seldom seen her in daylight, never so close, and never in this state of animation and passion. His heart was wrung, but his imagination was on fire. She was a sort of warrior-maiden—a Britomart, a Clorinda. Her eyes blazed. Her lip, which was so full of expression, quivered with energy. To think that any one should dare to think her beneath them!—of a lower sphere!—which was what he supposed his own family would do when they knew; whereas she was a kind of goddess—a creature made of fire and flame. To brave his father, with her standing by to back him; to deceive a registrar—about a miserable matter of age—six months more or less—what did these matter? What did anything matter in comparison with her?—in comparison with pleasing her, with doing what she wished to be done? He was a little afraid of her as she stood there, setting the very atmosphere on fire. If she ever belonged to him, became his familiar in every act of his life, might there not arise many moments in which he should be afraid of what she might think or say? This thought penetrated him underneath the fervor of admiration in his soul, but it did not daunt him or make him pause.

He said, “It is true I did not tell my father first. It did not come into my head. I can’t be sure now that it’s the thing to do. But when Crockford said what he did I told him it was so. It is the first time,” said Walter, with a little emotion, “that I ever set myself against my father. It may come easier afterward, but it’s something to do it the first time. Perhaps you’ve never done it, though you are braver than I.”

She laughed loudly with a contempt that hurt him.

“Never done it! Never done anything else, you mean! I never got on with my mother since I was a baby; and father, I never had any—at least I never saw him. Well! so you spoke up boldly, and said—what did you say?”

“Oh, don’t bother me!” he cried. “How can I tell what I said? And now I’ve come away. I have left home, Emmy. I am ready to go with you, dear, anywhere—if you like, to the end of the world.”

“I’ve no wish for that,” she said, with a softer laugh. “I’m going to London; that’s quite enough for me.”

“Well,” cried the lad, “I’ll go with you there; and all can be settled—everything—as you will. It can be nothing wrong that is done for you.”

“Oh, you’re thinking of the license again,” she said; “never mind that. I’ve been thinking too; and you can’t have your money till you’re twenty-one, don’t you know? Swearing will do you no good there—they want certificates and all sorts of things. And of course you can’t go to the end of the world, or even to London, without any money. So you must just wait and see what happens. Perhaps something will take place before then that will clear you altogether from me.”

He listened to the first part of this with mingled calm and alarm. To wait these six months, could he have seen her every day, would not have disturbed Walter much, notwithstanding the blaze of boyish passion which had lighted up all the world to him. The idea of a new life, an entire revolution of all the circumstances round him, and the tremendous seriousness of marriage, had given him a thrill of almost alarm. It was a plunge which he was ready to take, and yet which appalled him. And when she said that he could not have his money till he was twenty-one, a sensation half of annoyance, yet more than half of content, came over his soul. He could bear it well enough if only he could see her every day: but when she added that threat about the possibility of something happening, Walter’s heart jumped up again in his breast.

“What can happen?” he said. “Dear, nothing shall happen. If you are going to London I’ll go too—I must be near where you are—I’ve no home to go back to. London will be the best; it’s like the deep sea, everybody says. Nobody will find me there.”

“You must not be too sure of that. Sir Edward Penton’s son could be found anywhere. They will put your arrival in the papers, don’t you know? ‘At Mivart’s, Mr. Walter Penton, from the family seat.’” She broke off with a laugh. Walter, gazing at her, was entirely unaware what she meant. The fashionable intelligence of the newspapers, though his mother might possibly give an eye to it, was a blank to him; and when she met his serious impassioned look, the girl herself was affected by it. It was so completely sincere and true that her trifling nature was impressed in spite of everything. She despised him in many ways, though she was not without a certain liking for him. She was contemptuous of his ignorance, of the self-abandonment which made him ready to follow her wherever she went, even of his passion for herself. Emmy was very philosophical, nay, a little cynical in her views. She was ready to say and believe that there were many prettier girls than herself within Walter’s reach, and the idea that he cared for anything but her prettiness did not occur to this frank young woman. But the look of absolute sincerity in the poor boy’s eyes touched her in spite of herself. She put her hands on his shoulders with a momentary mute caress, which meant sudden appreciation, sudden admiration, like that with which an elder sister might have regarded the generous impulse of a boy: then withdrew laughing from the closer approach which Walter, blushing to his hair, and springing to his feet, ventured upon in response. “No, no,” she cried, “run away now. You can come back later; I’m very busy, I’ve got my packing to look after, and a hundred things to do—there’s a dear boy, run away now.”

“I am not a boy, at least not to you,” he cried, “not to you; you must not send me away.”

“But I must, and I do. How can I get my things ready with you hanging about? Run away, run away, do; and you can come back later, after it’s dark—not till after it’s dark. And then—and then—” she said.

He obeyed her after awhile, moved by the vague beatitude of that anticipation. “And then—” Nothing but the highest honor and tenderness was in the young man’s thoughts. He did not know indeed what to do when he should reach London with that companion, where he could take her, how arrange matters for her perfect security and welfare until the moment when he should be able to make her his wife. But somehow, either by her superior knowledge, or by that unfailing force of pure and honest purpose which Walter felt must always find the right way, this should be done. He went away from her cheered and inspired. But when he had got out of sight of the cottage he was not clear what to do for the long interval that must elapse; home he could not go—where should he go? He thought over the question with the icy blast in his face as he turned toward the east. And then he came to a sudden resolution, not indeed consciously inspired by Emmy, but which came from her practical impulse. In another mood, at another stage, her suggestion about his money might have shocked and startled him. It seemed now only a proof of her superior wisdom and good sense, the perfection of mind which he felt to be in her as well as the sweetness of manner and speech, the feeling, the sentiment, all the fine qualities for which he gave her credit, and for which he adored her, not only for the beauty in which alone she believed. And if he was about to do this bold and splendid thing, to carry off the woman he loved, and marry her by whatever means—and are not all means sanctified by love?—surely, certainly, whatever else might be necessary, he would want money. Having made up his mind on this point, Walter buttoned his coat, and set off for Reading like an arrow from a bow. There he managed to dine with great appetite, which would have been a comfort to his mother had she known it, and had an interview with Mr. Rochford, the solicitor, on the subject of the money which had been left to him (as he preferred to think) by old Sir Walter, the result of which was that he got with much ease a sum of fifty pounds (to Walter a fortune in itself), with which in his pocket he walked back with a tremendous sense of guilty elation, excitement, and trouble. He lingered on the road until after dark, as she had said, until, as he remembered so acutely, the hour of the evening meal at home, when the family would be all gathering, and every one asking, Where is Wat? He had rebelled before against the coercion of that family meal. This time it drew him with a kind of lingering desire which he resisted, he who before had half despised himself for obeying the habit and necessity of it. He went to his old post under the hedge, not knowing whether Emmy wished her departure with him to be known. For himself he did not care. If everybody he knew were to appear, father and mother, and all the authorities to whom he had ever been subject, he would have taken her hand and led her away before their faces. So he said to himself as he waited in the cold, half indignant, at that wonderful moment of his fate, that any concealment should be necessary. The cottage was all dark; there was not even a light in the upper window, such as was sometimes there, to make him aware that she looked for him. Not a glimmer of light and not a sound. The cottage seemed like a place of the dead. It seemed to him so much more silent than usual that he took fright after awhile, and this, in addition to his feeling that the time for secrecy was over, emboldened him in his impatience. He went up to the cottage door and knocked repeatedly more and more loudly after awhile, with a sensation of alarm. Was it possible that old deaf Mrs. Crockford was alone in the house? He had time to get into a perfect fever of apprehension before he heard a heavy step coming from behind, and the door was opened to him by Crockford himself, who filled up the whole of the little passage. The old man had a candle in his hand. “What, is it you, Mr. Walter?” he cried, astonished. “Where is she?” said Walter. “What have you done with her? Will you tell her I am here?” He could not speak of her familiarly by her name to this man. But Crockford had no such delicacy; he stared Walter in the face, looking at him across the flame of the candle, which waved and flickered in the night air.

“Emmy!” he said. “Why, Mr. Walter, she’s gone hours ago!”

“Gone! Where has she gone? You’ve driven her away. Some one has been here and driven her away!”

“Ay, Mr. Walter! The fly at the Penton Arms as she ordered herself to catch the two o’clock train; that’s what drove her away, and thankful we was to be quit of her; and so should you be, my young gentleman, if you was wise. She’s a little—”

“Hold your tongue!” cried Walter. “Who has driven her away? Is it my father?—is it—Some one has been here to interfere. Silence! If you were not an old man I’d knock you down.”

“Silence, and asking me a dozen questions? That’s consistent, that is! There’s been nobody here—not a soul. She’s gone as she intended. She told my old woman as soon as she heard I’d been down at the house. I didn’t believe her, but she’s kept her word. All the better for you, Mr. Walter, if you only could see it; all the better, sir. She’s not the same as you think. She’s—”

“Silence!” cried Walter again. “I don’t believe she has gone away at all; you are making up a story; you are trying to deceive me!”

At this old Crockford opened the door wider and bid him enter, and Walter, with eyes which were hot and painful, as if the blood had got into them, stared in, not knowing what he did. He had no desire to investigate. He knew well enough that it was true. She had sent him out of the way and then she had gone. She had not thought him worth the trouble. She had wanted to get rid of him. This sudden blow awoke no angry flush of pride, as it ought to have done. He felt no blame of her in his mind; instead, he asked himself what he had done to disgust her with him. It must be something he had done. He had disgusted her with his folly—with his hesitation about transgressing any puritanical habits of thought for her sake: and then by his talk about his home. He remembered her flash of disappointment, of contempt, when he had owned that it was not he who had told his father. Of course she had despised him, how could he think otherwise? She was ready to trust herself to him, and he had not been strong enough to make the least sacrifice for her. He turned and went away from Crockford’s door without a word.

And after that he did not know very well how he got through the weary hours. He walked to the railway station and prowled all about with a forlorn sort of hope that she might have missed her train. And then quite suddenly it occurred to him, having nothing else to do, that he might go home. He went, as has been seen, to his room in the dark, and sent his mother away with an entreaty to be left alone. He was not touched by his mother’s voice, or her touch or blessing. He was impatient of them, his mind being full of other things. His mind, indeed, was full of Emmy—full to bursting. It might be well for him that she was gone, if he could have thought so. He half agreed to that in his soul. But he would not think so. Had he carried her off triumphantly his mind would have been full of a hundred tremors, but to lose her now was more than he could bear. He lay thinking it all over, longing for the morning, in the dark, without candle or any other comfort, sleeping now and then, waking only to a keener consciousness. And then he became aware by some change in the chill, for there was none in the light, that it was morning. He got up in the dark—he had not undressed, but had been lying on the bed with the coverlet drawn over him in his morning clothes. It was very cold and blank, the skies all gloom, the river showing one pale gleam and no more. He got up as quietly as he could and stole down-stairs and opened stealthily the house door. No one was stirring, not even the servants, though in so full a house they were always early. The fresh morning air blew in his face and refreshed him. He felt his fifty pounds in his pocket. He scarcely thought of the misery he would leave behind him. Long enough, he said to himself, he had been bound by the family, now his own life was in question, and he must act for himself. There was a train at half past six which he could just catch. How different it was from his night drive so short a time ago! Then he was acting reluctantly for others, now willingly for himself. The cold air blew in his face with a dash of rain in it. He shut the gate quietly not to make a noise, but never looked back.