"I wish--" then he stopped himself. "Yes, she
will, I suppose," he added, lamely.

"He does not want me to stay," thought Lucina, with a sinking of
heart and a rising of maiden pride. She walked a little faster.

Jerome quickened his pace, and touched her shoulder. "You must not
think about me--about this," he murmured, hoarsely. "_You_ must not
be unhappy about it!"

Lucina turned and looked in his face sadly, yet with a soft
stateliness. "No," said she, "I will not. I do not see, after all,
why I should be unhappy, or you either. Many people do not marry. I
dare say they are happier. Aunt Camilla seems happy. I shall be like
her. There is nothing to hinder our friendship. We can always be
friends, like brothers and sisters even, and you can come to see
me--"

"No, I can't," said Jerome, "I can't do that even. I told you I could
not."

Lucina said no more. She turned her face and went on. She said
good-bye quickly when she reached the road, and was across it and
under the bars into the millet.

Jerome did not attempt to follow her; he stood for a moment watching
her moving through the millet, as through the brown waves of a
shallow sea; then he went back into the woods. When he reached the
place where he had sat with Lucina he stopped and spoke, as if she
were still there.

"Lucina," he said, "I promise you before God, that I will never, so
long as I live, love or marry any other woman but you. I promise you
that I will work as I never did before--my fingers to the bone, my
heart to its last drop of blood--to earn enough to marry you. And
then, if you are free, I will come to you again. I will fight to win
you, with all the strength that is in me, against the whole world,
and I will love you forever, forever, but I promise you that I will
never say this in your hearing to bind you and make you wait, when I
may die and never come."

Chapter XXX

Lucina did not go into her aunt Camilla's house again that afternoon.
She crossed the fields--her aunt's garden--skirted the house to the
road--thence home.

When she entered the south door her mother met her. "Why didn't you
wait until it was cooler?" she asked; then, before the girl could
answer, "What is the matter? Why, Lucina, you have been crying!"

"Nothing," replied Lucina, piteously, pushing past her mother.

"Where are you going?"

"Up-stairs to my chamber." With that Lucina was on the stairs, and
her mother followed.

The two were a long