at the sound to take her in his arms and hush her
up, as a mother hushes her weeping child. But the very longing,
having to be repressed, only made him more beside himself with
guilt, anxiety, and rage. They were quite still now. Sylvia looking
sadly down into the bubbling, merry, flowing water: Philip glaring
at her, wishing that the next word were spoken, though it might stab
him to the heart. But she did not speak.

At length, unable to bear it any longer, he said, 'Thou sets a deal
o' store on that man, Sylvie.'

If 'that man' had been there at the moment, Philip would have
grappled with him, and not let go his hold till one or the other
were dead. Sylvia caught some of the passionate meaning of the
gloomy, miserable tone of Philip's voice as he said these words. She
looked up at him.

'I thought yo' knowed that I cared a deal for him.'

There was something so pleading and innocent in her pale, troubled
face, so pathetic in her tone, that Philip's anger, which had been
excited against her, as well as against all the rest of the world,
melted away into love; and once more he felt that have her for his
own he must, at any cost. He sate down by her, and spoke to her in
quite a different manner to that which he had used before, with a
ready tact and art which some strange instinct or tempter 'close at
his ear' supplied.

'Yes, darling, I knew yo' cared for him. I'll not say ill of him
that is--dead--ay, dead and drowned--whativer Kester may
say--before now; but if I chose I could tell tales.'

'No! tell no tales; I'll not hear them,' said she, wrenching herself
out of Philip's clasping arm. 'They may misca' him for iver, and
I'll not believe 'em.'

'I'll niver miscall one who is dead,' said Philip; each new
unconscious sign of the strength of Sylvia's love for her former
lover only making him the more anxious to convince her that he was
dead, only rendering him more keen at deceiving his own conscience
by repeating to it the lie that long ere this Kinraid was in all
probability dead--killed by either the chances of war or tempestuous
sea; that, even if not, he was as good as dead to her; so that the
word 'dead' might be used in all honest certainty, as in one of its
meanings Kinraid was dead for sure.

'Think yo' that if he were not dead he wouldn't ha' written ere this
to some one of his kin, if not to thee? Yet none of his folk
Newcassel-way but believe him dead.'

'So Kester says,' sighed Sylvia.

Phi