There was a silence in the little room broken only by the low crackling of the dying fire.
She lifted shy glad eyes to his, and then came and laid her two hands in his.
"If you are quite sure you want me," she breathed softly.
The rapture of his face and the tenderness of his arms assured her on that point.
"There is just one great regret I have," said the young man, lifting his eyes towards his mother's picture. "If she only could have known it was you that I loved. Why didn't I tell her your name? But then---- Why, my dear, I didn't know your name. Do you realize that? I haven't known your name until now."
"I certainly did realize it," said Hazel with rosy cheeks. "It used to hurt dreadfully sometimes to think that even if you wanted to find me you wouldn't know how to go about it."
"You dear! Did you care so much?" His voice was deep and tender and his eyes were upon her.
"So much!" she breathed softly.
But the splash of red light on the floor at their feet warned them of the lateness of the hour and they turned to the immediate business of the moment.
"It is wonderful that things are just as they are to-night," said Brownleigh in his full, joyous tones. "It certainly seems providential. Bishop Vail, my father's old college chum, has been travelling through the West on missionary work for his church, and he is now at the stopping place where you spent last night. He leaves on the midnight train to-night, but we can get there long before that time, and he will marry us. There is no one I would rather have had, though the choice should have been yours. Are you going to mind very much being married in this brief and primitive manner?"
"If I minded those things I should not be worthy of your love," said Hazel softly. "No, I don't mind in the least. Only I've really nothing along to get married in--nothing suitable for a wedding gown. You won't be able to remember me in bridal attire--and there won't be even Amelia Ellen for bridesmaid." She smiled at him mischievously.
"You darling!" he said laying his lips upon hers again. "You need no bridal attire to make you the sweetest bride that ever came to Arizona, and I shall always remember you as you are now, as the most beautiful sight my eyes ever saw. If there was time to get word to some of my colleagues off at their stations we should have a wedding reception that would outrival your New York affairs so far as enthusiasm and genuine hearty good will is concerned, but they are all from forty to a hundred miles away from here and it will be impossible. Are you sure you are not too tired to ride back to the stopping place to-night?" He looked at her anxiously. "We will hitch Billy to the wagon, and the seat has good springs. I will put in plenty of cushions and you can rest on the way, and we will not attempt to come back to-night. It would be too much for you."