t aside by a beggarly sailor-boy? What did
Fothergill mean by bringing his poor relations dragging after him where
they were not wanted? He sprang to his feet, and went away with long
strides to make violent love to the farmer's rosy little daughter. He
knew that he meant nothing at all, and that he was filling the poor
child's head and heart with the vainest of hopes. He knew that he owed
especial respect and consideration to the daughter of his tenant, a man
who had dealt faithfully by him, and whose father and grandfather had
held Ashendale under the Latimers. He felt that he was acting meanly
even while he kissed little Lucy by the red wall where the apricots were
ripening in the sun. And he had no overmastering passion for excuse:
what did he care for little Lucy? He was doing wrong, and he was doing
it _because_ it was wrong. He was in a fiercely antagonistic mood, and,
as he could not fight Fothergill and Carroll, he fought with his own
sense of truth and honor, for want of a better foe. And Lucy, conscious
of her rosy prettiness, stood shyly pulling the lavender-heads in a glad
bewilderment of vanity, wonder and delight, while Latimer's heart was
full of jealous anger. If Sissy Langton could amuse herself, so could
he.

But Sissy was too happily absorbed in her amusement to think of his. She
had avoided him, as she had avoided Captain Fothergill, from a sense of
danger. They were becoming too serious, too much in earnest, and she did
not want to be serious. So she went gayly across the grass, laughing at
Archie because he would look on level ground for her maiden-hair
spleenwort. They came to a small enclosure.

"Here you are!" said Carroll. "This is what somebody said was the
refectory. It makes one feel quite sad and sentimental only to think
what a lot of jolly dinners have been eaten here. And nothing left of it
all!"

"That's your idea of sentiment, Mr. Carroll? It sounds to me as if you
hadn't had enough to eat."

"Oh yes, I had plenty. But we ought to pledge each other in a cup of
sack, or something of the kind. And a place like this ought at least to
smell deliciously of roast and boiled. Instead of which it might as well
be the chapel."

Sissy gazed up at the wall: "There's some maiden-hair! How was it I
never saw it this morning? Surely, we came along the top and looked down
into this place."

"No," said Archie. "That was the chapel we looked into. Didn't I say
they were just alike?"

"Well,