nk it is for him to speak now.
I should only anger him more if I tried it again."

She sighed suddenly and swiftly, but said nothing. Her hand lay passive
in his, but her face was turned now to the bright southerly window, and
he could see her puzzled eyes and her down-turned, serious mouth. She
was thinking with all her wits, and, plainly, could come to no
conclusion.

She turned to him again.

"And you told him plainly that you and I ... that you and I--"

"That you and I loved one another? I told him plainly. And it was his
contempt that angered me."

She sighed again.

* * * * *

It was a troublesome situation in which these two children found
themselves. Here was the father of one of them that knew, yet not the
parents of the other, who should know first of all. Neither was there
any promise of secrecy and no hope of obtaining it. If she should not
tell her parents, then if the old man told them, deception would be
charged against her; and if she should tell them, perhaps he would not
have done so, and so all be brought to light too soon and without cause.
And besides all this there were the other matters, heavy enough before,
yet far more heavy now--matters of their hopes for the future, the
complications with regard to the Religion, what Robin should do, what he
should not do.

So they sat there silent, she thinking and he waiting upon her thought.

She sighed again and turned to him her troubled eyes.

"My Robin," she said, "I have been thinking so much about you, and I
have feared sometimes--"

She stopped herself, and he looked for her to finish. She drew her hand
away and stood up.

"Oh! it is miserable!" she cried. "And all might have been so happy."

The tears suddenly filled her eyes so that they shone like flowers in
dew.

He stood up, too, and put his muddy arm about her shoulders. (She felt
so slight and slender.)

"It will be happy," he said. "What have you been fearing?"

She shook her head and the tears ran down.

"I cannot tell you yet.... Robin, what a holy man that travelling priest
must be, who said mass on Sunday."

The lad was bewildered at her swift changes of thought, for he did not
yet see the chain on which they hung. He strove to follow her.

"It seemed so to me too," he said. "I think I have never seen--"

"It seemed so to you too," she cried. "Why, what do you know of him?"

He was amazed at her vehemence. She had drawn herself cl