Laura awoke very early the following morning, but though the sun was bright outside, it brought no gaiety to her. The night before she had hurried her undressing, that she might bury herself in her pillow as quickly as possible, and force sleep to come to her. It was her natural instinct in the face of pain or humiliation. To escape from it by any summary method was always her first thought. "I will, I must go to sleep!" she had said to herself, in a miserable fury with herself and fate; and by the help of an intense exhaustion sleep came.

But in the morning she could do herself no more violence. Memory took its course, and a very disquieting course it was. She sat up in bed, with her hands round her knees, thinking not only of all the wretched and untoward incidents connected with the ball, but of the whole three weeks that had gone before it. What had she been doing, how had she been behaving, that this odious youth should have dared to treat her in such a way?

Fricka jumped up beside her, and Laura held the dog's nose against her cheek for comfort, while she confessed herself. Oh! what a fool she had been. Why, pray, had she been paying all these visits to the farm, and spending all these hours in this young fellow's company? Her quick intelligence unravelled all the doubtful skein. Yearning towards her kindred?—yes, there had been something of that. Recoil from the Bannisdale ways, an angry eagerness to scout them and fly them?—yes, that there had always been in plenty. But she dived deeper into her self-disgust, and brought up the real bottom truth, disagreeable and hateful as it was: mere excitement about a young man, as a young man—mere love of power over a great hulking fellow whom other people found unmanageable! Aye, there it was, in spite of all the glosses she had put upon it in her letters to Molly Friedland. All through, she had known perfectly well that Hubert Mason was not her equal; that on a number of subjects he had vulgar habits and vulgar ideas; that he often expressed his admiration for her in a way she ought to have resented. There were whole sides of him, indeed, that she shrank from exploring—that she wanted, nay, was determined, to know nothing about.

On the other hand, her young daring, for want of any better prey, had taken pleasure from the beginning in bringing him under her yoke. With her second visit to the farm she saw that she could make him her slave—that she had only to show him a little flattery, a little encouragement, and he would be as submissive and obedient to her as he was truculent and ill-tempered towards the rest of the world. And her vanity had actually plumed itself on so poor a prey! One excuse—yes, there was the one excuse! With her he had shown the side that she alone of his kindred could appreciate. But for the fear of Cousin Elizabeth she could have kept him hanging over the piano hour after hour while she played, in a passion of delight. Here was common ground. Nay, in native power he was her superior, though she, with her better musical training, could help and correct him in a thousand ways. She had the woman's passion for influence; and he seemed like wax in her hands. Why not help him to education and refinement, to the cultivation of the best that was in him? She would persuade Cousin Elizabeth—alter and amend his life for him—and Mr. Helbeck should see that there were better ways of dealing with people than by looking down upon them and despising them.

And now the very thought of these vain and silly dreams set her face aflame. Power over him? Let her only remember the humiliations, through which she had been dragged! All the dance came back upon her—the strange people, the strange young men, the strange, raftered room, with the noise of the mill-stream and the weir vibrating through it, and mingling with the chatter of the fiddles. But she had been determined to enjoy it, to give herself no airs, to forget with all her might that she was anyway different from these dale-folk, whose blood was hers. And with the older people all had been easy. With the elderly women especially, in their dark gowns and large Sunday collars, she had felt herself at home; again and again she had put herself under their wing, while in their silent way they turned their shrewd motherly eyes upon her, and took stock of her and every detail of her dress. And the old men, with their patriarchal manners and their broad speech—it had been all sweet and pleasant to her. "Noo, Miss, they tell ma as yo'.are Stephen Fountain's dowter. An I mut meak bold ter cum an speak to thee, for a knew 'un when he was a lile lad." Or "Yo'll gee ma your hand, Miss Fountain, for we're pleased and proud to git, yo' here. Yer fadther an mea gaed to skule togedther. My worrd, but he was parlish cliver! An I daursay as you teak afther him." Kind folk! with all the signs of their hard and simple life about them.

But the young men—how she had hated them!—whether they were shy, or whether they were bold; whether they romped with their sweethearts, and laughed at their own jokes like bulls of Bashan, or whether they wore their best clothes as though the garments burnt them, and danced the polka in a perspiring and anguished silence! No; she was not of their class, thank Heaven! She never wished to be. One man had asked her to put a pin in his collar; another had spilt a cup of coffee over her white dress; a third had confided to her that his young lady was "that luvin" to him in public, he had been fair obliged to bid her "keep hersel to hersel afore foak." The only partner with whom it had given her the smallest pleasure to dance had been the schoolmaster and principal host of the evening, a tall, sickly young man, who wore spectacles and talked through his nose. But he talked of things she understood, and he danced tolerably. Alas! there had come the rub. Hubert Mason had stood sentinel beside her during the early part of the evening. He had assumed the proudest and most exclusive airs with regard to her, and his chief aim seemed to be to impress upon her the prestige he enjoyed among his fellows as a football player and an athlete. In the end his patronage and his boasting had become insupportable to a girl of any spirit. And his dancing! It seemed to her that he held her before him like a shield, and then charged the room with her. She had found herself the centre of all eyes, her pretty dress torn, her hair about her ears. So that she had shaken him off—with too much impatience, no doubt, and too little consideration for the touchiness of his temper. And then, what stormy looks, what mutterings, what disappearances into the refreshment-room—and, finally, what, fierce jealousy of the schoolmaster! Laura awoke at last to the disagreeable fact that she had to drive home with him—and he had already made her ridiculous. Even Polly—the bedizened Polly—looked grave, and there had been angry conferences between her and her brother.

Then came the departure, Laura by this time full of terrors, but not knowing what to do, nor how else she was to get home. And, oh! that grinning band of youths round the door—Mason's triumphant leap into the cart and boisterous farewell to his friends—and that first perilous moment, when the pony had almost backed into the mill stream, and was only set right again by half a dozen stalwart arms, amid the laughter of the street!

As for the wild drive through the dark, she shivered again, half with anger, half with terror, as she thought of it. How had they ever got home? She could not tell. He was drunk, of course. He seemed to her to have driven into everything and over everything, abusing the schoolmaster and Mr. Helbeck and his mother all the time, and turning upon her when she answered him, or showed any terror of what might happen to them, now with fury, and now with attempts at love-making which it had taken all her power over him to quell.

Their rush up the park had been like the ride of the wild horseman. Every moment she had expected to be in the river. And with the approach of the house he had grown wilder and more unmanageable than before. "Dang it! let's wake up the old Papist!" he had said to her when she had tried to stop his singing. "What harm'll it do?"

As for the shame of their arrival, the very thought of Mr. Helbeck standing silent on the steps as they approached, of Hubert's behaviour, of her host's manner to her in the hall, made her shut her eyes and hide her red face against Fricka for sympathy. How was she ever to meet Mr. Helbeck again, to hold her own against him any more!

* * * * *

An hour later Laura, very carefully dressed, and holding herself very erect, entered Augustina's room.

"Oh, Laura!" cried Mrs. Fountain, as the door opened. She was very flushed, and she stared from her bed at her stepdaughter in an agitated silence.

Laura stopped short.

"Well, what is it, Augustina? What have you heard?"

"Laura! how can you do such things!"

And Augustina, who already had her breakfast beside her, raised her handkerchief to her eyes and began to cry. Laura threw up her head and walked away to a far window, where she turned and confronted Mrs. Fountain.

"Well, he has been quick in telling you," she said, in a low but fierce voice.

"He? What do you mean? My brother? As if he had said a word! I don't believe he ever would. But Mrs. Denton heard it all."

"Mrs. Denton?" said Laura. "Mrs. Denton? What on earth had she to do with it?"

"She heard you drive up. You know her room looks on the front."

"And she listened? sly old creature!" said Laura, recovering herself. "Well, it can't be helped. If she heard, she heard, and whatever I may feel, I'm not going to apologise to Mrs. Denton."

"But, Laura—Laura—was he——"

Augustina could not finish the odious question.

"I suppose he was," said Laura bitterly. "It seems to be the natural thing for young men of that sort."

"Laura, do come here."

Laura came unwillingly, and Augustina took her hands and looked up at her.

"And, Laura, he was abominably rude to Alan!"

"Yes, he was, and I'm very sorry," said the girl slowly. "But it can't be helped, and it's no good making yourself miserable, Augustina."

"Miserable? I? It's you, Laura, who look miserable. I never saw you look so white and dragged. You must never, never see him again."

The girl's obstinacy awoke in a moment.

"I don't know that I shall promise that, Augustina."

"Oh, Laura! as if you could wish to," said Augustina, in tears.

"I can't give up my father's people," said the girl stiffly. "But he shall never annoy Mr. Helbeck again, I promise you that, Augustina."

"Oh! you did look so nice, Laura, and your dress was so pretty!"

Laura laughed, rather grimly.

"There's not much of it left this morning," she said. "However, as one of the gentlemen who kindly helped to ruin it said last night, 'Lor, bless yer, it'll wesh!'"

* * * * *

After breakfast Laura found herself in the drawing-room, looking through an open window at the spring green in a very strained and irritable mood.

"I would not begin if I could not go on," she said to herself with disdain. But her lip trembled.

So Mr. Helbeck had taken offence, after all. Hardly a word at breakfast, except such as the briefest, barest civility required. And he was going away, it appeared, for three days, perhaps a week, on business. If he had given her the slightest opening, she had meant to master her pride sufficiently to renew her apologies and ask his advice, subject, of course, to her own final judgment as to what kindred and kindness might require of her. But he had given her no opening, and the subject was not, apparently, to be renewed between them.

She might have asked him, too, to curb Mrs. Denton's tongue. But no, it was not to be. Very well. The girl drew her small frame together and prepared, as no one thought for or befriended her, to think for and befriend herself.

She passed the next few days in some depression. Mr. Helbeck was absent.
Augustina was very ailing and querulous, and Laura was made to feel that
it was her fault. Not a word of regret or apology came from Browhead
Farm.

Meanwhile Mrs. Denton had apparently made her niece understand that there was to be no more dallying with Miss Fountain. Whenever she and Laura met, Ellen lowered her head and ran. Laura found that the girl was not allowed to wait upon her personally any more. Meanwhile the housekeeper herself passed Miss Fountain with a manner and a silence which were in themselves an insult.

And two days after Helbeck's departure, Laura was crossing the hall towards tea-time, when she saw Mrs. Denton admitting one of the Sisters from the orphanage. It was the Reverend Mother herself, the portly shrewd-faced woman who had wished Mr. Helbeck a good wife. Laura passed her, and the nun saluted her coldly. "Dear me!—you shall have Augustina to yourself, my good friend," thought Miss Fountain. "Don't be afraid." And she turned into the garden.

An hour later she came back. As she opened the door in the old wall she saw the Sister on the steps, talking with Mrs. Denton. At sight of her they parted. The nun drew her long black cloak about her, ran down the steps, and hurried away.

And indoors, Laura could not imagine what had happened to her stepmother. Augustina was clearly excited, yet she would say nothing. Her restlessness was incessant, and at intervals there were furtive tears. Once or twice she looked at Laura with the most tragic eyes, but as soon as Laura approached her she would hastily bury herself in her newspaper, or begin counting the stitches of her knitting.

At last, after luncheon, Mrs. Fountain suddenly threw down her work with a sigh that shook her small person from top to toe.

"I wish I knew what was wrong with you," said Laura, coming up behind her, and dropping a pair of soft hands on her shoulders. "Shall I get you your new tonic?"

"No!" said Augustina pettishly; then, with a rush of words that she could not repress:

"Laura, you must—you positively must give up that young man."

Laura came round and seated herself on the fender stool in front of her stepmother.

"Oh! so that's it. Has anybody else been gossiping?"

"I do wish you wouldn't—you wouldn't take things so coolly!" cried Augustina. "I tell you, the least trifle is enough to do a young girl of your age harm. Your father would have been so annoyed."

"I don't think so," said Laura quietly. "But who is it now? The Reverend
Mother?"

Augustina hesitated. She had been recommended to keep things to herself. But she had no will to set against Laura's, and she was, in fact, bursting with suppressed remonstrance.

"It doesn't matter, my dear. One never knows where a story of that kind will go to. That's just what girls don't remember."

"Who told a story, and what? I didn't see the Reverend Mother at the dance."

"Laura! But you never thought, my dear—you never knew—that there was a cousin of Father Bowles' there—the man who keeps that little Catholic shop in Market Street. That's what comes, you see, of going to parties with people beneath you."

"Oh! a cousin of Father Bowles was there?" said Laura slowly. "Well, did he make a pretty tale?"

"Laura! you are the most provoking—You don't the least understand what people think. How could you go with him when everybody remonstrated?"

"Nobody remonstrated," said the girl sharply.

"His sister begged you not to go."

"His sister did nothing of the kind. She was staying the night in the village, and there was literally nothing for me to do but come home with Hubert or to throw myself on some stranger."

"And such stories as one hears about this dreadful young man!" cried
Augustina.

"I dare say. There are always stories."

"I couldn't even tell you what they are about!" said Augustina. "Your father would certainly have forbidden it altogether."

There was a silence. Laura held her head as high as ever. She was, in fact, in a fever of contradiction and resentment, and the interference of people like Mrs. Denton and the Sisters was fast bringing about Mason's forgiveness. Naturally, she was likely to hear the worst of him in that house. What Helbeck, or what dependent on a Helbeck, would give him the benefit of any doubt?

Augustina knitted with all her might for a few minutes, and then looked up.

"Don't you think," she said, with a timid change of tone—"don't you think, dear, you might go to Cambridge for a few weeks? I am sure the Friedlands would take you in. You would come in for all the parties, and—and you needn't trouble about me. Sister Angela's niece could come and stay here for a few weeks. The Reverend Mother told me so."

Laura rose.

"Sister Angela suggested that? Thank you, I won't have my plans settled for me by Sister Angela. If you and Mr. Helbeck want to turn me out, why, of course I shall go."

Augustina held out her hands in terror at the girl's attitude and voice.

"Laura, don't say such things! As if you weren't an angel to me! As if I could bear the thought of anybody else!"

A quiver ran through Laura's features. "Well, then, don't bear it," she said, kneeling down again beside her stepmother. "You look quite ill and excited, Augustina. I think we'll keep the Reverend Mother out in future. Won't you lie down and let me cover you up?"

So it ended for the time—with physical weakness on Augustina's part, and caresses on Laura's.

But when she was alone, Miss Fountain sat down and tried to think things out.

"What are the Sisters meddling for? Do they find me in their way? I'm flattered! I wish I was. Well!—is drunkenness the worst thing in the world?" she asked herself deliberately. "Of course, if it goes beyond a certain point it is like madness—you must keep out of its way, for your own sake. But papa used to say there were many things a great deal worse. So there are!—meanness, and shuffling with truth for the sake of your soul. As for the other tales, I don't believe them. But if I did, I am not going to marry him!"

She felt herself very wise. In truth, as Stephen Fountain had realised with some anxiety before his death, among Laura's many ignorances, none was so complete or so dangerous as her ignorance of all the ugly ground facts that are strewn round us, for the stumbling of mankind. She was as determined not to know them, as he was invincibly shy of telling them.

For the rest, her reflections represented, no doubt, many dicta that in the course of her young life she had heard from her father. To Stephen Fountain the whole Christian doctrine of sin was "the enemy"; and the mystical hatred of certain actions and habits, as such, was the fount of half the world's unreason.

The following day it was Father Bowles' turn. He came over in what seemed to be his softest and most catlike mood, rubbing his hands over his chest in a constant glee at his own jokes. He was amiability itself to Laura. But he, too, had his twenty minutes alone with Augustina; and afterwards Mrs. Fountain ventured once more to speak to Laura of change and amusement. Miss Fountain smiled, and replied as before—that, in the first place she had no invitations, and in the next, she had no dresses. But again, as before, if Mr. Helbeck should express a wish that her visit to Bannisdale should come to an end, that would be another matter.

* * * * *

Next morning Laura was taking a walk in the park when a letter was brought to her by old Wilson, the groom, cowman, and general factotum.

She took it to a sheltered nook by the riverside and read it. It was from
Hubert Mason, in his best commercial hand, and it ran as follows:

"Dear Miss Fountain,—You would not allow me, I know, to call you Cousin Laura any more, so I don't attempt it. And of course I don't deserve it—nor that you should ever shake hands with me again. I can't get over thinking of what I've done. Mother and Polly will tell you that I have hardly slept at nights—for of course you won't believe me. How I can have been such a blackguard I don't understand. I must have taken too much. All I know is it didn't seem much, and but for the agitation of my mind, I don't believe anything would ever have gone wrong. But I couldn't bear to see you dancing with that man and despising me. And there it is—I can never get over it, and you will never forgive me. I feel I can't stay here any more, and mother has consented at last to let me have some money on the farm. If I could just see you before I go, to say good-bye, and ask your pardon, there would be a better chance for me. I can't come to Mr. Helbeck's house, of course, and I don't suppose you would come here. I shall be coming home from Kirby Whardale fair to-morrow night, and shall be crossing the little bridge in the park—upper end—some time between eight and nine. But I know you won't be there. I can't expect it, and I feel it pretty badly, I can tell you. I did hope I might have become something better through knowing you. Whatever you may think of me I am always

"Your respectful and humble cousin,

"HUBERT MASON."

"Well—upon my word!" said Laura. She threw the letter on to the grass beside her, and sat, with her hands round her knees, staring at the river, in a sparkle of anger and amazement.

What audacity!—to expect her to steal out at night—in the dusk, anyway—to meet him—him! She fed her wrath on the imagination of all the details that would belong to such an escapade. It would be after supper, of course, in the fast lengthening twilight. Helbeck and his sister would be in the drawing-room—for Mr. Helbeck was expected home on the following day—and she might perfectly well leave them, as she often did, to talk their little Catholic gossip by themselves, and then slip out by the chapel passage and door, through the old garden, to the gate in the wall above the river bank, and so to the road that led along the Greet through the upper end of the park. Nothing, of course, could be easier—nothing.

Merely to think of it, for a girl of Laura's temperament, was already bit by bit to incline to it. She began to turn it over, to taste the adventure of it—to talk very fast to Fricka, under her breath, with little gusts of laughter. And no doubt there was something mollifying in the boy's humble expressions. As for his sleepless nights—how salutary! how very salutary! Only the nail must be driven in deeper—must be turned in the wound.

It would need a vast amount of severity, perhaps, to undo the effects of her mere obedience to his call—supposing she made up her mind to obey it. Well! she would be quite equal to severity. She would speak very plain things to him—very plain things indeed. It was her first serious adventure with any of these big, foolish, troublesome creatures of the male sex, and she rose to it much as Helbeck might have risen to the playing of a salmon in the Greet. Yes! he should say good-bye to her, let priests and nuns talk what scandal they pleased. Yes! he should go on his way forgiven and admonished—if he wished it—for kindred's sake.

Her cheek burned, her heart beat fast. He and she were of one blood—both of them ill-regarded by aristocrats and holy Romans. As for him, he was going to ruin at home; and there was in him this strange, artistic gift to be thought for and rescued. He had all the faults of the young cub. Was he to be wholly disowned for that? Was she to cast him off for ever at the mere bidding of the Helbecks and their friends?

He would never, of course, be allowed to enter the Bannisdale drawing-room, and she had no intention at present of going to Browhead Farm. Well, then, under the skies and the clouds! A gracious pardon, an appropriate lecture—and a short farewell.

* * * * *

All that day and the next Laura gave herself to her whim. She was perfectly conscious, meanwhile, that it was a reckless and a wilful thing that she was planning. She liked it none the less for that. In fact, the scheme was the final crystallisation of all that bitterness of mood that had poisoned and tormented her ever since her first coming to Bannisdale. And it gave her for the moment the morbid pleasure that all angry people get from letting loose the angry word or act.

Meanwhile she became more and more conscious of a certain network of blame and discussion that seemed to be closing about her and her actions. It showed itself by a number of small signs. When she went into Whinthorpe to shop for Augustina she fancied that the assistants in the shop, and even the portly draper himself, looked at her with a sly curiosity. The girl's sore pride grew more unmanageable hour by hour. If there was some ill-natured gossip about her, going the round in the town and the neighbourhood, had she—till now—given the least shadow of excuse for it? Not the least shade of a shadow!

* * * * *

Mr. Helbeck, his sister, and Laura were in the drawing-room after supper.
Laura had been observing Mrs. Fountain closely.

"She is longing to have her talk with him," thought the girl; "and she shall have it—as much as she likes."

The shutters were not yet closed, and the room, with its crackling logs, was filled with a gentle mingled light. The sun, indeed, was gone, but the west still glowed, and the tall larches in the front enclosure stood black against a golden dome of sky. Laura rose and left the room. As she opened the door she caught Augustina's quick look of relief and the drop of the knitting-needles.

Fricka was safely prisoned upstairs. Laura slipped on a hat and a dark cloak that were hanging in the hall, and ran down the passage leading to the chapel. The heavy seventeenth-century door at the end of it took her some trouble to open without noise, but it was done at last, and she was in the old garden.

Her little figure in its cloak, among the dark yews, was hardly to be seen in the dusk. The garden was silence itself, and the gate in the wall was open. Once on the road beside the river she could hardly restrain herself from running, so keen was the air, so free and wide the evening solitude. All things were at peace; nothing moved but a few birds and the tiniest intermittent breeze. Overhead, great thunderclouds kept the sunset; beneath, the blues of the evening were all interwoven with rose; so, too, were the wood and sky reflections in the gently moving water. In some of the pools the trout were still lazily rising; pigeons and homing rooks were slowly passing through the clear space that lay between the tree-tops and the just emerging stars; and once Laura stopped, holding her breath, thinking that she saw through the dusk the blue flash of a kingfisher making for a nest she knew. Even in this dimmed light the trees had the May magnificence—all but the oaks, which still dreamed of a best to come. Here and there a few tufts of primroses, on the bosom of the crag above the river, lonely and self-sufficing, like all loveliest things, starred the dimness of the rock.

Laura's feet danced beneath her; the evening beauty and her passionate response flowed as it were into each other, made one beating pulse; never, in spite of qualms and angers, had she been more physically happy, more alive. She passed the seat where she and Helbeck had lingered on Easter Sunday; then she struck into a path high above the river, under spreading oaks; and presently a little bridge came in sight, with some steps in the crag leading down to it.

At the near end of the bridge, thrown out into the river a little way for the convenience of fishermen, was a small wooden platform, with a railing, which held a seat. The seat was well hidden under the trees and bank, and Laura settled herself there.

She had hardly waited five minutes, absorbed in the sheer pleasure of the rippling river and the soft air, when she heard steps approaching the bank. Looking up, she saw Mason's figure against the sky. He paused at the top of the rocky staircase, to scan the bridge and its approaches. Not seeing her, he threw up his hand, with some exclamation that she could not hear.

She smiled and rose.

As her small form became visible between the paleness of the wooden platform and a luminous patch in the river, she heard a cry, then a hurrying down the rock steps.

He stopped about a yard from her. She did not offer her hand, and after an instant's pause, during which his eyes tried to search her face in the darkness, he took off his hat and drew his hand across his brow with a deep breath.

"I never thought you'd come," he said huskily.

"Well, certainly you had no business to ask me! And I can only stay a very few minutes. Suppose you sit down there."

She pointed to one of the rock steps, while she settled herself again on the seat, some little distance away from him.

Then there was an awkward silence, which Laura took no trouble to break.
Mason broke it at last in desperation.

"You know that I'm an awful hand at saying anything, Miss—Miss Fountain. I can't—so it's no good. But I've got my lesson. I've had a pretty rough time of it, I can tell you, since last week."

"You behaved about as badly as you could—didn't you?" said Laura's soft yet cutting voice out of the dark.

Mason fidgeted.

"I can't make it no better," he said at last. "There's no saying I can, for I can't. And if I did give you excuses, you'd not believe 'em. There was a devil got hold of me that evening—that's the truth on't. And it was only a glass or two I took. Well, there!—I'd have cut my hand off sooner."

His tone of miserable humility began to affect her rather strangely. It was not so easy to drive in the nail.

"You needn't be so repentant," she said, with a little shrinking laugh. "One has to forget—everything—in good time. You've given Whinthorpe people something to talk about at my expense—for which I am not at all obliged to you. You nearly killed me, which doesn't matter. And you behaved disgracefully to Mr. Helbeck. But it's done—and now you've got to make up—somehow."

"Has he made you pay for it—since?" said Mason eagerly.

"He? Mr. Helbeck?" She laughed. Then she added, with all the severity she could muster, "He treated me in a most kind and gentlemanly way—if you want to know. The great pity is that you—and Cousin Elizabeth—understand nothing at all about him."

He groaned. She could hear his feet restlessly moving.

"Well—and now you are going to Froswick," she resumed. "What are you going to do there?"

"There's an uncle of mine in one of the shipbuilding yards there. He's got leave to take me into the fitting department. If I suit he'll get me into the office. It's what I've wanted this two years."

"Well, now you've got it," she said impatiently, "don't be dismal. You have your chance."

"Yes, and I don't care a haporth about it," he said, with sudden energy, throwing his head up and bringing his fist down on his knee.

She felt her power, and liked it. But she hurried to answer:

"Oh! yes you do! If you're a man, you must. You'll learn a lot of new things—you'll keep straight, because you'll have plenty to do. Why, it will 'hatch you over again, and hatch, you different,' as somebody said. You'll see."

He looked at her, trying hard to catch her expression in the dusk.

"And if I do come back different, perhaps—perhaps—soom day you'll not be ashamed to be seen wi' me? Look here, Miss Laura. From the first time I set eyes on you—from that day you came up—that Sunday—I haven't been able to settle to a thing. I felt, right enough, I wasn't fit to speak to you. And yet I'm your—well, your kith and kin, doan't you see? There can't be no such tremendous gap atween us as all that. If I can just manage myself a bit, and find the work that suits me, and get away from these fellows here, and this beastly farm——"

"Ah!—have you been quarrelling with Daffady all day?"

She looked for him to fly out. But he only stared, and then turned away.

"O Lord! what's the good of talking?" he said, with an accent that startled her.

She rose from her seat.

"Are you sorry I came to talk to you? You didn't deserve it—did you?"

Her voice was the pearliest, most musical, and yet most distant of things. He rose, too—held by it.

"And now you must just go and make a man of yourself. That's what you have to do—you see? I wish papa was alive. He'd tell you how—I can't. But if you forget your music, it'll be a sin—and if you send me your song to write out for you, I'll do it. And tell Polly I'll come and see her again some day. Now good-night! They'll be locking up if I don't hurry home."

But he stood on the step, barring the way.

"I say, give me something to take with me," he said hoarsely. "What's that in your hat?"

"In my hat?" she said, laughing—(but if there had been light he would have seen that her lips had paled). "Why, a bunch of buttercups. I bought them at Whinthorpe yesterday."

"Give me one," he said.

"Give you a sham buttercup? What nonsense!"

"It's better than nothing," he said doggedly, and he held out his hand.

She hesitated; then she took off her hat and quietly loosened one of the flowers. Her golden hair shone in the dimness. Mason never took his eyes off her little head. He was keeping a grip on himself that was taxing a whole new set of powers—straining the lad's unripe nature in wholly new ways.

She put the flower in his hand.

"There; now we're friends again, aren't we? Let me pass, please—and good-night!"

He moved to one side, blindly fighting with the impulse to throw his powerful arms round her and keep her there, or carry her across the bridge—at his pleasure.

But her light fearlessness mastered him. He let her go; he watched her figure on the steps, against the moonlight between the oaks overhead.

"Good-night!" she dropped again, already far away—far above him.

The young man felt a sob in his throat.

"My God! I shan't ever see her again," he said to himself in a sudden terror. "She is going to that house—to that man!"

For the first time a wild jealousy of Helbeck awoke in him. He rushed across the bridge, dropped on a stone half-way up the further bank, then strained his eyes across the river.

… Yes, there she passed, a swift moving whiteness, among the great trees that stood like watchmen along the high edge of the water. Below him flowed the stream, a gulf of darkness, rent here and there by sheets and jags of silver. And she, that pale wraith—across it—far away—was flitting from his ken.

All the fountains of the youth's nature surged up in one great outcry and confusion. He thought of his boyish loves and sensualities—of the girls who had provoked them—of some of the ugly facts connected with them. A great astonishment, a great sickening, came upon him. He felt the burden of the flesh, the struggle of the spirit. And through it all, the maddest and most covetous yearning!—welling up through schemes and hopes, that like the moonlit ripples on the Greet, dissolved as fast as they took shape.

* * * * *

Meanwhile Laura went quickly home. A new tenderness, a new remorse towards the "cub" was in the girl's mind. Ought she to have gone? Had she been kind? Oh! she would be his friend and good angel—without any nonsense, of course.

She hurried through the trees and along the dimly gleaming path. Suddenly she perceived in the distance the sparkle of a lantern.

How vexatious! Was there no escape for her? She looked in some trouble at the climbing woods above, at the steep bank below.

Ah! well, her hat was large, and hid her face. And her dress was all covered by her cloak. She hastened on.

It was a man—an old man—carrying a bundle and a lantern. He seemed to waver and stop as she approached him, and at the actual moment of her passing him, to her amazement, he suddenly threw himself against one of the trees on the mountain side of the path, and his lantern showed her his face for an instant—a white face, stricken with—fear, was it? or what?

Fright gained upon herself. She ran on, and as she ran it seemed to her that she heard something fall with a clang, and, afterwards, a cry. She looked back. The old man was still there, erect, but his light was gone.

Well, no doubt he had dropped his lantern. Let him light it again. It was no concern, of hers.

Here was the door in the wall. It opened to her touch. She glided in—across the garden—found the chapel door ajar, and in a few more seconds was safe in her own room.