enjoyed her determination not to reply to this question; it showed
she felt its significance. Her pure eyes looked steadily into his;
nor was the expression in his such as to daunt her or make her
afraid. They were like two children defying each other; each
determined to conquer. At last she unclosed her lips, and nodding
her head as if in triumph, said, as she folded her arms once more in
her check apron,--

'Yo'll have to go home sometime.'

'Not for a couple of hours yet,' said he; 'and yo'll be frozen
first; so yo'd better say if I can ever forget yo' again, without
more ado.'

Perhaps the fresh voices breaking on the silence,--perhaps the tones
were less modulated than they had been before, but anyhow Bell
Robson's voice was heard calling Sylvia through the second door,
which opened from the dairy to the house-place, in which her mother
had been till this moment asleep. Sylvia darted off in obedience to
the call; glad to leave him, as at the moment Kinraid resentfully
imagined. Through the open door he heard the conversation between
mother and daughter, almost unconscious of its meaning, so difficult
did he find it to wrench his thoughts from the ideas he had just
been forming with Sylvia's bright lovely face right under his eyes.

'Sylvia!' said her mother, 'who's yonder?' Bell was sitting up in
the attitude of one startled out of slumber into intensity of
listening; her hands on each of the chair-arms, as if just going to
rise. 'There's a fremd man i' t' house. I heerd his voice!'

'It's only--it's just Charley Kinraid; he was a-talking to me i' t'
dairy.'

'I' t' dairy, lass! and how com'd he i' t' dairy?'

'He com'd to see feyther. Feyther asked him last night,' said
Sylvia, conscious that he could overhear every word that was said,
and a little suspecting that he was no great favourite with her
mother.

'Thy feyther's out; how com'd he i' t' dairy?' persevered Bell.

'He com'd past this window, and saw yo' asleep, and didn't like for
t' waken yo'; so he com'd on to t' shippen, and when I carried t'
milk in---'

But now Kinraid came in, feeling the awkwardness of his situation a
little, yet with an expression so pleasant and manly in his open
face, and in his exculpatory manner, that Sylvia lost his first
words in a strange kind of pride of possession in him, about which
she did not reason nor care to define the grounds. But her mother
rose from her chair somewhat formally, as if she did not inten