cited to it, and she would not hear of coming in to rest;
and when I entreated her to wait till I could get the gig to drive her
part of the way, she held me fast, and insisted, with all the terror of
womanly shamefacedness, that, "he--that Tor--that Mr. Torwood--should
not know." And she sprang up to go home instantly, before he could
guess.

"Oh, Emily, that is too bad, when nothing would make him so glad."

"Oh! no, no! he has been used too ill; he can't care for me now, and as
if I should--"

I don't think poor Emily uttered anything half so coherent as this, at
any rate I understood that she disclaimed the least possibility of his
affection continuing, and felt it an outrage on herself to be where she
could even suppose herself to have voluntarily put herself in his way.

I thought there was nothing for it but to let her start, hurry after
her with some vehicle, and then call and bring home my boy; but in the
midst of my perplexity and her struggle with her tears, who should
appear on the scene but Fulk himself, driving home the spring cart
wherein, everybody being busy, he had conveyed a pig to a new home.

I don't know how it was all done or said. My first notion was that he
should be warned of our dear boy's danger, and rescue him before
anything else. I could not get into my head that there was no present
reason for dread, and yet when I had gasped out "Oh,
Fulk--Alured--Fetch him home! Emily came to warn us!" the accusation
began to seem so monstrous and horrible that I could not go on with it
before Emily. She too, perhaps, found it harder to utter to a man than
to a woman, and between the strangeness of speaking to one another
again, and her shyness and his wonder and delight, it seemed to me
unreasonable that poor little Alured's danger was counting for nothing
between them, and I turned from the former reticence to the bereaved
tigress style, and burst out, "And are we to stand talking here while
our boy is in these people's power?"

Then Fulk did listen to what it was all about; but even then it seemed
to me he would not think half so much of the peril as of what Emily had
done. In truth, I believe all they both wanted was to get out of my
way; but they pacified me by Fulk's undertaking, if Emily did not
object to the cart, to drive her across the park where no one would
meet her, and she could get out only a mile from home, and to call at
Spinney Lawn in returning by the road and take up Alur