It is not like
marrying a girl from the nearest village," he added tactlessly, but
without, in his self-absorption, meaning to wound.

Archelaus drew away through the night. He laughed a little.

"Not as if you was wedding Phoebe, who's only a miller's girl?" he
asked. Ishmael laughed too, though a little doubtfully, not sure of the
cordiality of Archelaus's chuckle.

"Of course it's not like. Phoebe's a dear little thing, but Miss Grey
is different, naturally."

In the passage Archelaus ran into Phoebe, emerging with the other
girls, and took from her with an air of gallantry the wrap she had upon
her arm.

"I'll put 'ee home," he told her: "best have this on; 'tes a bit cool on
cliff."

"Oh, but--" began Phoebe. She had no hopes, such as she had cherished,
against all reason, upon getting Ishmael's note that morning, of a
moonlit walk home with him, but something in her shrank from the walk
undertaken with Archelaus. He wrapped the shawl about her as she spoke.
Phoebe could no more have resisted a man who had his mind made up than
a frog can get away from a viper which has once sighted it, and she let
herself be swathed without further protest. Good-byes were said, with
careless affection on the part of Vassie, and kindliness from Judith and
a pressure of the hand and a deep look from Blanche.

"Good-night, little girl! You're going to be very happy, too, you know,"
said Blanche, who knew nothing about it, but felt it was a good thing to
say. Phoebe and Archelaus, both tongue-tied now they were alone, set
off through the moonlight and the soft air to the cliff path.

It was a long time now since she had met Archelaus out of doors, as he
had several times half-coaxed, half-bullied her into doing. Now she felt
a constraint with him she had not previously, as though there were some
portent in the simple act of seeing her home there had never been
before. She had, of course, flirted with him in a very innocent way, if
her methods had been a little cruder than Blanche's would have under the
same circumstances. The repartee had been simple and the caresses
nothing more than a slight touch on waist or arm, repulsed by her with
more alarm than prudery. Phoebe was fonder far of Ishmael than of
Archelaus; she told herself that she admired Ishmael more--he was so
much the gentleman.... What she did not know was that a rebel thing in
her, the thing for which poor facile, soft little Phoebe had been as
much created as th