t it, miss?" asked Loveday,
even her tongue faltering at the suggestion.

But though Letitia might be a romp, she was not a deceitful girl, and
she respected her mother.

"Oh, Loveday, how can you suggest such a thing? It would be telling
mamma a lie. Besides, she would never believe me."

At this moment Mrs. Veale, hearing voices, opened the door and looked
out.

"Letitia! Come in at once, and do not speak again to Loveday Strick."

Letitia made round eyes at Loveday and sped up the path. Loveday pushed
open the gate and went out.

She went along the white dusty road, between the hedgerows of elder
whose crumpled green leaves were unfolding in the sunny April weather,
and her tears were the only rain that smiling country-side had seen for
many a day, and they, to match the month, were already drying, for the
fire burnt too high in Loveday for tears to hold her long. She fled
along the road at first blindly, then more slowly as the exhaustion that
follows on such rage as hers overcame her, and as she paused at last to
sink against a mossy bank and rest, a horseman overtook her.

It was Mr. Constantine on his white cob, looking a very dapper
gentleman, but Loveday heeded him not, only raising her great black eyes
unseeingly at the sound of the hoofs. Yet that so sombre gaze arrested
Mr. Constantine, for it seemed to him an unwonted look in that land of
buxom maids. He drew rein beside her.

"Are you a gipsy, my girl?" he asked her kindly.

Loveday shook her head.

"Come, you have a tongue as well as that handsome pair of eyes, I
suppose? No?"

"My tongue's wisht, it brings ill-luck," said Loveday.

Mr. Constantine studied her more attentively.

"If all women thought that, there'd be more happy marriages," he said,
slipping his hand into his pocket. "You've wisdom on your tongue,
whether it's lucky or no. You say you're not a gipsy?"

By this time it had dawned on Loveday what, in her absorption, she had
not at first noticed, that she was speaking to one of the gentry, and
to no less a one than Mr. Constantine, of Constantine. She stood up and
dropped her curtsey out of habit, but sullenly. Oddly enough, it was the
sullenness and not the curtsey that took Mr. Constantine's fancy.

"No, sir," said Loveday. "I'm not a gipsy. I'm Loveday Strick."

"Loveday ..." said the gentleman. "Loveday ... That's a beautiful name.
No--it's more than a name, it's a phrase. A very beautiful phrase."

Loveday raised her