While Dan Frost was hunting for the secret places of the old cabinet, Tom and Nancy were picking their way across the snowcovered paths of Lovel's Woods to the Red Farm. These woods were a striking feature in the landscape of the open coast country around Deal. Rising somewhat precipitously almost out of the sea, three ridges extended far back into the country, with deep ravines between. They were thickly wooded, for the most part with juniper and pine. In some places the descent to the ravines was sheer and massed with rocks heaped there by a primeval glacier; in other parts they dipped more gently to the little valleys, which were threaded with many a path worn smooth by the dwellers on the eastern shore. Nearly two miles might be saved in a walk from the Inn to Squire Pembroke's Farm by going across the Woods rather than by the encircling road.

As they were used to the frozen country Tom and Nancy preferred the shorter if more difficult route. They had often found their way together through the tangled thickets of the Woods or along the shores of the Strathsey River, in season accompanied by dog and gun hunting fox and rabbit or partridge and wild duck. In Tom's company Nancy seemed to forget her shyness and would talk freely enough of her interests and her doings. He had always been fond of her, though until lately she had seemed to him hardly more than a child. This winter, as so frequently he had watched her sitting in the firelight listening to the old Marquis's playing and dreaming perhaps as he also dreamed, he realized that she was growing up. A new beauty had come into her face and slender form, her great dark eyes seemed to hold deeper interests, she was no longer in the world of childhood. The mystery enveloping her origin, which for some reason Mrs. Frost had never chosen to dispel, gave a certain piquancy to the interest and affection Tom felt for her. In the imaginative tales he had been fond of weaving for his own amusement, Nancy would frequently figure, revealed at last as the child of noble parents, as a princess doomed by some strange fate to exile. He thought of these things as from time to time he glanced back at her, holding aside some branch that crossed the path or giving her his hand to help her over a boulder in the way. The red scarf about her neck, red cap on her dark hair, flashing in and out of the tangled pathway against the background of the snow-clad woods, gave a bright note of colour to the scene.

They were obliged for the most part to walk in single file until the last ridge descended over a mass of rocks to the marshes along Beaver Pond. Then having given her his hand to help her down, he kept hold of it as they went along the free path to the open meadows. The feeling of Nancy's cool little hand in his gave Tom an odd and conscious sense of pleasure.

"You have been uncommonly silent, Nance, even for you," he said at last.

"Oh, I'm always silent, Tom," she replied. "It is because I am stupid and have nothing to say."

"Nonsense, my dear, you always have a lot to say to me. But you are forever reading, thinking ... what's it all about?"

"Oh, I think, Tom, because I have little else to do; but my thoughts aren't often worth the telling. In truth there is no one, not even you, who particularly cares to hear them. Tom," she said, "I am restless and discontented. Sometimes I wish I were far away from the Inn at the Red Oak and Deal, from all that I know,—even from you and Dan."

Pembroke suddenly realized that he could not laugh at these fancies, as he had so often done, and dismiss as if they were the vagaries of a child.

"Why are you restless and discontented, Nancy?" he asked seriously.

"Aren't you ever?" she questioned for reply. "Don't you ever get weary with the emptiness of it all, the everlasting round, the dullness? Don't you ever want to get away from Deal, and know people and see things and be somebody?"

"I do that, Nance. I mean to go as soon as I am a lawyer. I won't poke about Deal long after that, nor Monday Port either. I mean to set up in Coventry."

"Coventry!" exclaimed the girl with an accent of disdain. "That is just a provincial town like the Port, only a little more important because it is the capital of the state."

"Being the capital means a lot," protested Tom in defense of his ambitions of which for the first time he felt ashamed. "Men are sent to Congress from there. Nance, girl, ours is a wonderful country; we are making a great nation."

"Some people may be. None of us are, Tom. I wonder at you more than I do at Dan, for you have had more advantages. As for me, I am only a girl; there's nothing for girls but to sit and sew, and prepare meals for men to eat, and wait until some one comes and chooses to marry them. Then they go off and do the same thing some place else."

"But what have you to complain of, Nancy? you have the kindest brother, a good mother, a comfortable home...."

"The kindest brother, yes. But you know Mrs. Frost is not my mother. She doesn't care for me and I can't care for her as if she were. I have never loved any one but Dan."

"You can't help loving Dan," said Tom, thinking of his good friend. "But then, little girl, you love me too." And he pressed the hand in his warmly.

Nancy quickly withdrew her hand. "I am not a little girl. I have been grown up in lots of ways ever so long."

"But you love me?"

"I like you. Oh, Tom, the life we all lead is so futile. If I weren't a girl, I should go away."

They had reached the stile by now that led into the meadow which sloped down from the clump of poplars a hundred rods or so above, in the midst of which the Red Farmhouse stood. Instead of helping his companion over the steps in the wall, Tom stopped and stood with his back to them. "Let's stay here a minute, Nance, and have it out."

"Have what out?" she asked a trifle sharply.

"You haven't any queer wild plan in your head to go away, have you?"

"I don't know—sometimes I think I have. I dare say there are things somewhere a girl could find to do."

"But Mrs. Frost—?"

"Oh, Mother would not miss me long—she'd have Dan."

"But Dan would miss you."

"Yes, Dan might. I couldn't go, if Dan really needed me here. I think sometimes he doesn't. But, Tom, if you were in my position, if you didn't know who your parents were, if all your life you had been living on the charity of others—good and kind as they are, wonderful even as Dan has always been—you couldn't be happy. I'm not happy."

"But, Nance, what has come over you?"

"No—nothing in particular; I have often felt this way."

"But, dear, I couldn't let you go. I'd mind a lot, Nance."

She looked at him with a sudden smile of incredulity. "You, Tommy?"

"You can't go—you musn't go," Tom repeated, as he drew nearer to her.

Suddenly he reached out and seized her hands. "Don't you realize it?—I love you, Nance; I've always loved you!" He drew her close to him. She did not resist nor did she yield, but still with her eyes she questioned him. "Kiss me, Nancy," he whispered. She let him press his lips to hers but without responding to the pressure, as though she still were wondering of the meaning of this sudden unforeseen passion. But at last, caught up in its intensity, she gave him back his kisses. He took her face then between his hands and looked into it with a gaze that in itself was a caress. "Oh my sweetheart!" he said softly.

Slowly she disengaged herself. "Tom, Tom," she said, "this is foolishness. We musn't do this."

"Why not?" demanded Pembroke. "I tell you I love you!"

"No—not that way, not that way. I didn't mean that. Why, you foolish boy, haven't we kissed each other hundreds of times before?"

"No, Nancy, not like that—not like this," he added, as again he put his arm around her and drew her face to his. And again she yielded. "Say it—say it, Nance—you love me."

She drew back from him. "I think I must, Tom. I don't think I could let you kiss me that way if I didn't. But now come ... Tom ... dear Tom ... do come ... don't kiss me again."

"But say it," he insisted, "say you love me."

"Please help me over the stile."

He gave her his hand and she sprang lightly to the top of the steps. In a second he was by her side, both of them balancing somewhat uncertainly on the top of the stone wall. "I won't let you down till you say it."

"Please—".

"No—you love me?"

"Yes—there—I love you—now—".

"No, kiss me again."

"Tom—no." But the negative was weak and Pembroke took it so.

"Now," he said, as they began to cross the meadow, "we must tell Mrs. Frost and Dan."

"Tell them what?"

"Why, that we are in love with each other, and that you are going to marry me. What else?"

"No, no," exclaimed Nancy, "You must say nothing. I am not in love. I don't mean to marry you."

"But why not? You are. You do."

"Are—do—?"

"In love—you do mean to marry me."

"No—Tom, listen—you know your father and mother would hate it. You have at least two years before you can practice. We couldn't marry—we can't marry. Oh, there are things I must do, before I can think of that."

"Not marry me? Good Lord, what does it mean when people are in love with each other, what does it mean when a girl kisses a fellow like that?"

"I don't know! what it means—madness, I guess. Do you think I could marry as I am, not knowing who I am?"

"Oh, what do I care who your parents were! We'll find out. I swear we will. Good Lord, I love you, Nancy; I love you!"

"Please, please don't make me talk about it now."

"But soon—?"

"Yes, soon—only promise you'll say nothing to Dan or to Mother till we have talked again. I must think; it is all so queer and unexpected; I never dreamed that you cared for me except as a little girl."

"I didn't know I did. But come to think of it, Nance, it has been you as much as Dan that has brought me to the Inn at the Red Oak. Why it was you I wanted to walk and talk and play with."

"Please,—dear Tom—G—ive me time to think what it all means. Now be careful, there's the farmer. You have a lot to do, and we have been lingering too long. Mother wants us to go back by the dunes and enquire for old Mrs. Meath; so we must hurry."

The sun had set before they started on the homeward journey in one of the squire's sleighs. As they turned the bend at the beach and started across the dune road close to the sea, a great yellow moon rose over Strathsey Neck.

Tom had been so preoccupied with his own emotions and the unexpected and absorbing relation in which he found himself with Nancy, that he had altogether forgotten why he had asked her to go off with him that afternoon. As they skimmed along over the snow-packed road across the sands, Tom spied another sleigh on the Port road, the occupants of which he recognized as Jesse and the Marquis. Suddenly the memory of the night before flashed over him. He pointed with his whip in their direction. "There's the old Marquis coming back from Monday Port," he said.

Nancy looked without comment, but Tom thought the colour deepened in her cheeks.

"See here, Nance," he exclaimed impulsively; "has the Marquis anything to do with the mood you were in this afternoon? Has he said anything to make you discontented?"

He was sure that now she paled.

"What makes you ask?"

"Oh—a number of things. I've seen you with him more or less; felt he had some influence over you."—Tom was blundering now and knew it.—

She looked at him coldly. "I have been with the Marquis very little save when others have been about. He has no influence over me. I don't care to discuss such queer ideas."

"Oh, all right ... I dare say I'm mistaken ... I only thought..." He hesitated... "If you care for me, I don't mind what you think of the Marquis."

"Remember, Tom—you promised to say nothing until I gave you leave. You're not fair..."

"But you do love me?"

Nancy was silent.

"There is nothing between you and the old Frenchman—no mystery?"

There was no reply. Nancy sat with compressed lips and drawn brows, gazing fixedly at the distant House on the Dunes at the end of their road. For a long while they drove on in silence.

At the House on the Dunes they chatted for a while with old Mrs. Meath, who lived there alone with a maid-of-all-work. She was a source of much anxiety to Mrs. Frost, who sent several times each week to learn if all was going well. But Mrs. Meath was a Quaker and apparently never gave a thought to loneliness or fear.

"They will never guess," she said to Nancy and Tom as they sat in the tiled kitchen talking with her, "what I am going to do."

"Not going to leave the House on the Dunes, Mrs. Meath?"

"Deary me! no; but I am going to take a boarder."

"Really?—you are setting up to rival the Inn, eh?" said Tom.

"No", Tommy, nothing of the sort. But I am offered good pay for my front room, and as Jane Frost is always nagging me about living here alone, I thought I'd take her."

"And who pray is your new boarder?" asked Nancy.

"That is the funny part of it," replied Mrs. Meath, "I know nothing but her name—Mrs. Fountain. Everything has been arranged by a lawyer man from Coventry, and she is coming in a few days. Tell thy mother, Nancy dear, that she need worry about me no longer."

"I will, Mrs. Meath. I think it is a splendid idea, and I hope you will like the lady. Mother will be so glad that you have some one with you."

Soon they were on their way across the dunes and marshes to Tinterton road and home. Dan was preoccupied, not with the news that was so exciting to Mrs. Meath, but with the recollection of his conversation with Nancy as they had driven toward the house. Despite her implicit denial he knew there was a secret between the Marquis de Boisdhyver and herself. He could not imagine what it might be, and it was evident that she did not mean to tell him at present. But his anxieties on this or kindred subjects were not relieved by his companion during the remainder of the drive. Moreover his attempts to speak again of his newly discovered passion were received coldly—so coldly indeed that he had no heart for pleading for such proofs as she had given him earlier in the afternoon that she shared his emotion. So despite the splendid moon, the bright cold night, the merry jangle of the sleigh bells, the drive back was not the unmixed joy Tom had promised himself; and he felt his role of a declared and practically-accepted lover anything but a satisfactory one.

Finally they reached the Inn and entered the bar where they found the Marquis sitting alone before a cheerful fire. All of Tom's suspicious jealousies returned with fresh force, for Nancy rapidly crossed the room, spoke a few words to the old gentleman in an inaudible tone of voice, and passed quickly on to her own apartments.