"If you desire my happiness, my lord----"
"What else is there in the whole world that I should desire?"
"You will take me to that country place and live there. I fear the world of fashion and I have no wish to live in London. I have learned from the Lady Anastasia how the great ladies pass their time."
"Everything shall be as you wish, Molly. Everything, believe me."
He then, by way of illustrating this assurance, proposed a thing which he himself wished.
"We must be married immediately, Molly, because I am called away, by affairs of importance, to Gloucestershire. I ought to leave this place not later than Saturday." The day was Thursday.
"Saturday? We must be married on Saturday?"
"Sooner than Saturday. To-morrow. That will give us time enough to make what little preparations may be necessary."
"To-morrow? But we cannot be married so soon."
"Everything is prepared. I have the license. We can be married to-morrow."
"There is another thing. Your guardian would like to make a public ceremony of the wedding; he would hang the town with flags, and ring the bells, and summon the band of the marrowbones and cleavers, while all the world looked on."
"Yes. He is so proud of the marriage that he would like to celebrate it."
"I should like to be married with no one to look on, and no one to know anything about it until it was over."
"Why--there, Molly--there, we are agreed. I was in great fear that you would not think with me. My dear, if there is one thing which I abhor, it is the public ceremony and the private feasting and merriment with which a wedding is accompanied. We do not want the town to be all agog; we do not want to set all tongues wagging; nor do we want to be a show with a grand triumphal march and a feast to last three days afterwards."
"Certainly. I can arrange everything. Now, Molly, my plan is this. We will be married privately in St. Nicholas Church at six in the morning, before the company are out of their beds. No one will see us; after the marriage you will come back here; I will return with you, and we will then inform the captain and your mother of the joyful news. Believe me, when they come to think it over, they will rejoice to be spared the trouble and the preparation for a wedding feast."