whose assistance I can safely count, to find your husband honourable
employment, and set him on the road to more. And how, guided by so sweet
a saint, can he but mount to fame and honour?"

She spoke no word, but the hand resting in his entwined his fingers in
an answering pressure.

"Dare I then ask so much?" cried he. And as if the ambiguity which
had marked his speech were not enough, he must needs, as he put this
question, bend in his eagerness towards her until her brown tresses
touched his swart cheek. Was it then strange that the eagerness
wherewith he urged another's suit should have been by her interpreted as
her heart would have had it?

She set her hands upon his shoulders, and meeting his eager gaze with
the frank glance of the maid who, out of trust, is fearless in her
surrender:

"Throughout my life I shall thank God that you have dared it," she made
answer softly.

A strange reply he deemed it, yet, pondering, he took her meaning to be
that since Jocelyn had lacked the courage to woo boldly, she was glad
that he had sent an ambassador less timid.

A pause followed, and for a spell they sat silent, he thinking of how
to frame his next words; she happy and content to sit beside him without
speech.

She marvelled somewhat at the strangeness of his wooing, which was
like unto no wooing her romancer's tales had told her of, but then
she reflected how unlike he was to other men, and therein she saw the
explanation.

"I wish," he mused, "that matters were easier; that it might be mine
to boldly sue your hand from your father, but it may not be. Even had
events not fallen out as they have done, it had been difficult; as it
is, it is impossible."

Again his meaning was obscure, and when he spoke of suing for her hand
from her father, he did not think of adding that he would have sued it
for his son.

"I have no father," she replied. "This very day have I disowned him."
And observing the inquiry with which his eyes were of a sudden charged:
"Would you have me own a thief, a murderer, my father?" she demanded,
with a fierceness of defiant shame.

"You know, then?" he ejaculated.

"Yes," she answered sorrowfully, "I know all there is to be known. I
learnt it all this morning. All day have I pondered it in my shame to
end in the resolve to leave Sheringham. I had intended going to London
to my mother's sister. You are very opportunely come." She smiled up at
him through the tears that were glistenin