dear heart?" saith she.

_Milly_ sat up, and pushed aside her hair from her face, the which was
flushed and sullen.

"Aunt _Joyce_, may the Lord forgive you for this day's work!" saith she.

I was fair astonied that she should dare thus to speak. But Aunt
_Joyce_ was in no wise angered.

"Amen!" she saith, as softly as might be spoken. "Had I no worser sins
to answer for, methinks I should stand the judgment."

"No worser!" _Milisent_ blazed forth. "What, you think it a light
matter to part two hearts that love well and truly?"

"Nay, truly, I think it right solemn matter," saith Aunt _Joyce_, still
softly. "And if aught graver can be, _Milly_, it is to part two whereof
the one loveth well, and the other--may God forgive us all!"

"What mean you now?" saith _Milisent_ of the same fashion. "Is it my
love you doubt, or his?"

"_Milisent Louvaine_," saith Aunt _Joyce_, "if thou be alive twenty
years hence, thou shalt thank God from thy very heart-root that thou
wert stayed on that road to-day."

"Oh ay, that is what folk always say!" murmurs she, and laid her down
again. "`Thou wilt thank me twenty years hence,' quoth they, every
stinging stroke of the birch. And they look for us beaten hounds to
crede it, forsooth!"

"Ay--when the twenty years be over."

"I am little like to thank you at twenty years' end," saith _Milly_
sullenly, "for I count I shall die of heart-break afore twenty weeks."

"No, _Milly_, I think not."

"And much you care!"

Then I saw Aunt _Joyce's_ face alter--terribly.

"_Milisent_," she said, "if I had not cared, I should scantly have gone
of set purpose through that which wrung every fibre of my heart, ay, to
the heart's core."

"It wrung me more than you," _Milisent_ makes answer, of the same
bitter, angered tone as aforetime.

Aunt _Joyce_ turned away from the bed, and I saw pain and choler strive
for a moment in her eyes. Then the choler fell back, and the pain
abode.

"Poor child! She cannot conceive it." She said nought sterner; and she
came and sat in the window alongside of me.

"I tell you, Aunt _Joyce_,"--and _Milisent_ sat up again, and let
herself down, and came and stood before us--"I tell you, you have ruined
my life!"

"My maid," Aunt _Joyce_ makes answer, with sore trouble in her voice,
"thine elders will fain have thee and thy sisters told a tale the which
we have alway kept from you until now. It was better hidden, unless you
needed the lesson.