ut an old maid's notion
of the thing. And that's the way with yourself, is it not, Gilian? Will
you tell me now?"

Still he hung hesitating.

"Do you--are you fond of the girl?" said she and now it was he who was
in the chair and she was bending over him.

"Do I not?" he cried, sudden and passionate lest his confidence should
fail. "Ay, with all my heart."

"Poor Gilian!" said she.

"Yes, poor Gilian!" he repeated bitterly, thinking on all that lay
between him and the girl of his devotion. Now, if ever, was the time to
tell the real object of his visit, how that those old surmisers upstairs
were wider of the mark than the innkeeper, and that the person for whom
the hunt was up through half the shire was sequestered in the lonely
shealing hut on the moor of Karnes.

"I am sorry," she went on, and there was no mistake about it, for her
grief was in her face. "I am sorry, but you must forget, my dear. It is
easy--sometimes--to forget, Gilian; you must be just throng with work
and duty, and by-and-by you'll maybe wonder at yourself having been in
the notion of Nan Gordon's daughter, made like her mother (and God bless
her!) for the vexation of youth, but never for sober satisfaction. I am
wae for you, Gilian, and I cannot help you, though I would tramp from
here to Carlisle in my bauchles if it would bring her to you."

"You maybe would not need to go so far," he answered abruptly. "There is
a hut behind the hill there, and neither press nor fire nor candle nor
companion in it, and Nan--Miss Nan, is waiting there for me to go back
to her, and here I'm wasting precious hours. Do you not see that I'm
burning like a fire?"

"And you have the girl in the moor?" she cried incredulously.

"That I have!" he answered, struck by the absolute possession her
sentence suggested. "I have her there. I took her there. I took her from
her father's home. She came willingly, and there she is, for me!"

He held out his arms with a gesture indescribable, elate, nervous with
his passion. "Auntie, think of it: you mind her eyes and her hair, yon
turn of the neck, and her song? They're mine, I'm telling you."

"I mind them in her mother," said the little lady, stunned by this
intelligence. "I mind them in her mother, and they were not at all, in
her, for those who thought they were for them. This--this is a terrible
thing, Gilian," she said piteously.

He rose, and "What could I do?" he asked. "I loved her, and was I to
look at her