She urged these points, as she had received the offer of marriage, with an agitation which was almost painful to see.

This peculiarity in her conduct, however, which might have irritated some men, and rendered others distrustful, had no unfavorable effect on Mr.Carling.He set it down to an excess of sensitiveness and delicacy which charmed him.

He was himself--though he never would confess it--a shy, nervous man by nature.

Ostentation of any sort was something which he shrank from instinctively, even in the simplest affairs of daily life; and his future wife's proposal to avoid all the usual ceremony and publicity of a wedding was therefore more than agreeable to him--it was a positive relief.
The courtship was kept secret at Torquay, and the marriage was celebrated privately at Penliddy.

It found its way into the local newspapers as a matter of course, but it was not, as usual in such cases, also advertised in the _Times_.