asked at last, point-blank.

"Why, yes, if you wish it," he answered without alacrity.

"You may remain, sir."

Her offended tone aroused him now to the understanding that he was
impolite. Contrite he stood beside her in a moment.

"With your permission, mistress, I will go with you. I am a dull fellow,
and to-day I know not what mood is on me. So sorry a one that I feared
I should be poor company. Still, if you'll endure me, I'll do my best to
prove entertaining."

"By no means," she answered coldly. "I seek not the company of dull
fellows." And she was gone.

He stood where she had left him, and breathed a most ungallant prayer of
thanks. Next he laughed softly to himself, a laugh that was woeful with
bitterness.

"Fore George!" he muttered, "it is all that was wanting!"

He reseated himself upon the fallen tree, and there he set himself to
reflect, and to realize that he, war-worn and callous, come to Castle
Marleigh on such an errand as was his, should wax sick at the very
thought of it for the sake of a chit of a maid, with a mind to make a
mock and a toy of him. Into his mind there entered even the possibility
of flight, forgetful of the wrongs he had suffered, abandoning the
vengeance he had sworn. Then with an oath he stemmed his thoughts.

"God in heaven, am I a boy, beardless and green?" he asked himself. "Am
I turned seventeen again, that to look into a pair of eyes should make
me forget all things but their existence?" Then in a burst of passion:
"Would to Heaven," he muttered, "they had left me stark on Worcester
Field!"

He rose abruptly, and set out to walk aimlessly along, until suddenly a
turn in the path brought him face to face with Cynthia. She hailed him
with a laugh.

"Sir laggard, I knew that willy-nilly you would follow me," she cried.
And he, taken aback, could not but smile in answer, and profess that she
had conjectured rightly.

CHAPTER XIV. THE HEART OF CYNTHIA ASHBURN

Side by side stepped that oddly assorted pair along--the maiden whose
soul was as pure and fresh as the breeze that blew upon them from the
sea, and the man whose life years ago had been marred by a sorrow, the
quest of whose forgetfulness had led him through the mire of untold sin;
the girl upon the threshold of womanhood, her life all before her and
seeming to her untainted mind a joyous, wholesome business; the man
midway on his ill-starred career, his every hope blighted save the one
odious hope o