the husband you take for yourself a very unhappy man."

"He will perhaps understand me better than you do," Nancy answered
gently.

"Oh," he cried at this, "can't you see that a woman surrenders herself
when she loves? She gives as gladly as a man takes, and is happy to
have him for her lord and master. Not that he wishes to rule her, for
'twould be the thought of his life that her every desire should be
filled, but she must be willing to yield."

"Ye'd have made a grand Turk," Nancy broke in, and there was a glint of
humor in her tone as she spoke the words.

"I think," Danvers answered, "you'll find me asking only what most men
expect to get."

"If that be true, the chances are heavy that I shall live and die
unwed," she said with a laugh.

"Oh, no!" he cried, in a cutting voice. "I dare say your mind's made up
as to what you intend to do! Perhaps when you're the Duchess of
Borthwicke his grace will enjoy your visiting other men and writing
lines like these," and he dashed his fist on the paper again.

Nancy had by this time come to the far end of her patience, and she was
on her feet in a minute.

"Listen to me," she said. "I went to Ayrshire at the written asking of
Janet McGillavorich to come to her own home. The morning I started for
Mauchline the rear of her house fell into the cellar, making it
extremely dangerous to remain in any part of the dwelling. I went to
the inn only because she was there, and she stayed with me until my
father came and took me away. I saw Robert Burns alone but once,
entirely by accident, in the broad light of day.

"As for the rhyme," and she looked down at the paper for a moment,
regarding it as a thing of no importance whatever, "it was not I who
spoke in the lines, but a gipsy girl of my imaginings. Ye've had little
personal experience with the thing called gift----"

He must have thought there was some flouting of him in this, for he
broke in heatedly:

"And I thank God for it," he cried, "for it seems to be a thing which
makes people betray trusts, lose all thought for others, raise hopes
which they never intend to fulfil, unbridle their passions, forget
their sex, and ride away to the deil at their own gate."

None could have foreseen the effect this speech had upon Nancy; the
thought it contained falling so parallel to her own talk of the night
before; but it's one matter to say a thing of one's self and an
entirely different affair to have it said concerning one