l? I wish I had not
told you! You know--you must know--you're all the happiness I have in my
life."

"I 'm sure," he said, kissing me fondly, "you make all the brightness in
mine. But what am I to do to help you?"

"Just nothing. As I said before, they must give me a say in the matter
before they marry me right out."

"My colonial oath! Here 's a nice deceitful piece of baggage! Upon my
word, Miss Hope! So you 're the shy little girl who's quite overcome if
a fellow so much as looks at her!"

He was standing on the rise of the hill close above us, and how he had
come there without our seeing I 'm sure I don't know, except that lovers
always are caught sooner or later, and I suppose it was our fate. I 'd
rather almost anybody than Dick Stanton had caught us though; for he was
a vindictive little wretch, I always felt, and whether he cared for me
or not he would not like to find himself cut out by his own overseer. We
two sprang apart guiltily, and I saw my lover's face grow red and angry,
but not as dark and threatening as the one above me.

"So Mr. Griffith," said our unwelcome third party, "it's you who 've
been poaching on my manor. What the devil do you mean by it, sir?"

Paul, I saw, was too angry to trust himself to speak, only he waved his
hand to me as if he would have sent me home; but I was too frightened to
go. I was not twenty remember, and it seemed to me the two men were on
the brink of a violent quarrel, and vaguely I hoped my presence might
restrain them. I was wrong, I know now; I ought to have gone, and
perhaps--who can tell? But there--all the misery of our lives is just
summed up in thinking whether we might not have acted differently.
And so I took no notice of Paul, though I saw he wanted me gone, and
I stayed. Then Dick Stanton, seeing Paul did not speak, for the moment
lost all control of himself, and raged and stormed and used such
language as I had never heard in my life before, and I was well
accustomed to bad language; for my father, when he had pretty well got
to the bottom of the brandy bottle, didn't care much what he said, but
he never spoke as Dick Stanton did; oh, never. He was a gentleman at
least, my father. Paul stood it just for a minute; I think he was too
dumb-founded to speak, and then he made one step forward and caught the
other man by the neck--he was so tall and strong, my sweetheart--and
shook him as if he had been a child. It was Dick Stanton's turn to look
surprised