Ah! would they
forgive?--and--if, if he wakens, I shall die of shame. Oh, naughty
love of mine that was so cruel yesterday, I forgive you!" What would he
do--must he do--if he wakened? The risk, the urgent passion of appealing
love, gave her approach the quality of a sacred ceremonial. She bent
lower, not breathing, fearful, helpless, and dropt on his forehead a
kiss, light as the touch a honey-seeking butterfly leaves on an unstirred
flower. He moved a little; she rose in alarm and backed to the door. "Oh!
why did I?" she said to herself, reproachful for a moment's delicious
weakness. She looked back at the motionless sleeper, as she stood in the
doorway. "Why did I?--but then he does look so young--and innocent."

Once more in the world of custom, she fled through the forest shadows,
and far away sank down panting. She caught up the tumbled downfall of
hair, and suddenly another Leila, laughed as she remembered that he would
miss the game-bag he had set at his side. How puzzled he would be when he
missed it. Amused delight in his wondering search captured her. She saw
again the beauty of his mouth and the face above it as she recalled what
her Aunt Margaret Grey had mischievously said to her, a girl, of James
Penhallow. "He has the one Penhallow beauty--the mouth, but then he has
that monumental Penhallow nose--it might be in the way." She had not
understood, but now she did, and again laughing went away homeward, not
at all unhappy or repentant, for who would ever know, and love is a
priest who gives absolution easily.

CHAPTER XXXIV

In her room she went straight to the long cheval glass and looked at
Leila Grey. "So, he will never ask me again?" The mirror reported a quite
other answer. "Mark Rivers once said conscience runs down at times like a
watch. I must have forgotten to wind up mine. How could I have done it!"
She blushed a little at the remembrance. "Well, he will never know." She
dressed in white summer garb with unusual care and went down the stairs
smiling.

"The Captain is not in yet," said the maid.

She waited long for John Penhallow, who had gone up the back stairs, and
now at last came down to dinner.

"Excuse me, Leila. I was so very tired that I fell asleep in the old
cabin, but I had a noble tramp, and there are some birds, not many; I
shot badly." He said no word of the displaced game-bag, which made her
uneasy, but talked of the mills and of some trouble at the mines about
wages