for a moment. "You will let me see you sometimes?"

"I hope to come now and then to Baronmead," she answered quietly. "But
you will not--please--come to the Manor again."

He looked down at her with eyes that had become inscrutable. "I shall not
come against your will," he said.

"Thank you," she answered simply.

And so he left her.

CHAPTER XIV

A BIG THING

As the widowed rector's only daughter, Dot's occupations were many and
various, and it was in consequence no difficult matter to be too deeply
engrossed in these occupations to have any time to spare for intercourse
with the rector's pupil.

Her brother had gone back to college, and there was therefore no excuse
for the said pupil to linger when his studies were over, though he
invented many that would not have borne a very close investigation.

But his ingenuity was all to no purpose. Dot could be ingenious too, and
she evaded him so adroitly that at the end of a week he had abandoned
his efforts.

He went about with a certain sternness in those days, but it was not the
sternness of the vanquished, rather the dogged patience of the man who is
quite sure of ultimate success. Dot, peeping from the kitchen window to
see him ride away, marked this on more than one occasion and
strengthened her defences in consequence. She had not the remotest
intention of seeing Bertie alone again for many a month, if ever. His
persistence had scared her badly on that night at Baronmead. She was
horribly afraid of what he might feel impelled to say to her, almost
terrified at the bare notion of an explanation, and the prospect of a
possible apology was unthinkable. It was easier for her to sacrifice his
good comradeship, though that of itself was no easy matter, and she could
only thrust her sense of loss into the background of her thoughts by the
most strenuous efforts.

She was sturdily determined to make him relinquish their former pleasant
intimacy before they should meet again. She was growing up, she told
herself severely, growing up fast; and intimacies of that sort were
likely to be misconstrued.

She took the counsel of none upon this difficult matter. Her father was
too vague a dreamer to guide her, or so much as to realise that she stood
in need of guidance. And Dot had gone her own independent way all her
life. Her healthy young mind was not accustomed to grapple with problems,
but she did not despair on that account. She only resolutely set hersel