he expected
Denas to wrong father-love and mother-love and to deceive day by day
the friend and the companion who had been so kind and so fairly loyal
to her.

No wonder John Penelles hated him instinctively. John's soul needed
but a glimpse of the lovers sauntering down the narrow cliff-path to
apprehend the beginning of sorrows. Instantaneous as the glimpse was,
it explained to him the restless, angry, fearful feeling that had
driven him from his own cottage to the place appointed by destiny for
the revelation of his child's danger and of his own admonition.

He was glad that he had obeyed the spiritual order; whatever power had
warned him had done him service. It is true the fond assurances of
Denas had somewhat pacified his suspicions, but he was not altogether
satisfied. When Denas declared that Roland had not made love to her,
John felt certain that the girl was in some measure deceiving
him--perhaps deceiving herself; for he could not imagine her to be
guilty of a deliberate lie. Alas! lying is the vital air of secret
love, and a girl must needs lie who hides from her parents the object
and the course of her affections. Still, when he thought of her arms
around his neck, of her cheek against his cheek, of her assertion that
"Denas loved no one better than her father and mother," he felt it a
kind of disloyalty to his child to altogether doubt her. He believed
that Denas believed in herself. Well, then, he must try and trust her
as far and as long as it was possible.

And Joan trusted her daughter--she scouted the idea of Denas doing
anything that was outside her mother's approval. She told John that
his fear was nothing but the natural conceit of men; they thought a
woman could not be with one of their sex and not be ready to sacrifice
her own life and the lives of all her kinsfolk for him. "It be such
puddling folly to start with," she said indignantly; "talking about
Denas being false to her father and mother! 'Tis a doleful, dismal,
ghastly bit of cowardice, John. Dreadful! aw, dreadful!"

Then John was silent, but he communed with his own heart. Joan had not
seen Roland and Denas as he had seen them; no one had troubled Joan as
he had been troubled. For something often gives to a loving heart a
kind of prescience, when it may be used for wise and saving ends; and
John Penelles divined the angry trend of Roland's thoughts, though it
was impossible for him to anticipate the special form that trend would
ta