ou tell me then?"

"I was afraid, sweetheart."

"Of what? Of what?"

"Why, of you. You had been so cruel."

Barbara's head, still strained far as could be from mine, now drew
nearer by an ace, and then she launched at me the charge of most
enormity, the indictment that justified all my punishment.

"You had kissed her before my eyes, here, sir, where we are now, in my
own Manor Park," said Barbara.

I took my arms from about her, and fell humbly on my knee.

"May I kiss so much as your hand?" said I in utter abasement.

She put it suddenly, eagerly, hurriedly to my lips.

"Why did she write to me?" she whispered.

"Nay, love, I don't know."

"But I know. Simon, she loves you."

"It would afford no reason if she did. And I think----"

"It would and she does. Simon, of course she does."

"I think rather that she was sorry for----"

"Not for me!" cried Barbara with great vehemence. "I will not have her
sorry for me!"

"For you!" I exclaimed in ridicule. (It does not matter what I had been
about to say before.) "For you! How should she? She wouldn't dare!"

"No," said Barbara. One syllable can hold a world of meaning.

"A thousand times, no!" cried I.

The matter was thus decided. Yet now, in quiet blood and in the secrecy
of my own soul, shall I ask wherefore the letter came from Mistress
Gwyn, to whom the shortest letter was no light matter, and to let even
a humble man go some small sacrifice? And why did it come to Barbara and
not to me? And why did it not say "Simon, she loves you," rather than
the words that I now read, Barbara permitting me: "Pretty fool, he loves
you." Let me not ask; not even now would Barbara bear to think that it
was written in pity for her.

"Yes, she pitied you and so she wrote; and she loves you," said Barbara.

I let it pass. Shall a man never learn wisdom?

"Tell me now," said I, "why I may not see Carford?"

Her lips curved in a smile; she held her head high, and her eyes were
triumphant.

"You may see Lord Carford as soon as you will, Simon," said she.

"But a few minutes ago----" I began, much puzzled.

"A few minutes!" cried Barbara reproachfully.

"A whole lifetime ago, sweetheart!"

"And shall that make no changes?"

"A whole lifetime ago you were ready to die sooner than let me see him."

"Simon, you're very----He knew, I told him."

"You told him?" I cried. "Before you told me?"

"He asked me before," said Barbara.

I did not grudge her that