“Where was I?  Yes, I remember.  It is a lesson for a girl, Peter, never to marry a boy or a savage.”

“Sarah!” said Peter.  He raised his face and looked at her.  His eyes were red, but he was too miserable to care; he was, as she had said, only a boy.  “Sarah, you’re not in earnest!  You can’t be!  I—­I know I ought to be angry.”  Miss Sarah laughed derisively.  “Yes, you laugh, for you know too well I can’t be angry with you.  I love you!” said Peter, passionately, “though you are—­as cruel as though I’ve not had pretty well as much to bear to-day, as I know how to stand.  First, John Crewys, and now you—­saying—­”

“Just the truth,” said Sarah, calmly.

“I don’t deny,” said Peter, in a quivering voice, “that—­that some of the beastly things he said came—­came home to me.  I’ve been a selfish brute to her, I always have been.  You’ve said so pretty plainly, and I—­I dare say it’s true.  I think it’s true.  But to you—­and I was so happy.”  He hid his face in his hand.

“I’m glad you have the grace to see the error of your ways at last,” said Sarah, encouragingly.  “It makes me quite hopeful about you.  But I’m sorry to see you’re still only thinking of our happiness—­I mean yours,” she corrected herself in haste, for a sudden eager hope flashed across Peter’s miserable young face.  “Yours, yours, yours.  It’s your happiness and not hers you think of still, though you’ve all your life before you, and she has only half hers.  But no one has ever thought of her—­except me, and one other.”

“John Crewys?” said Peter, angrily.

“Not John Crewys at all,” snapped Sarah.  “He is just thinking of his own happiness like you are.  All men are alike, except the one I’m thinking of.  But though I make no doubt that John Crewys is just as selfish as you are, which is saying a good deal, yet, as it happens, John Crewys is the only man who could make her happy.”

“What man are you thinking of?” said Peter.

Jealousy was a potent factor in his love for Sarah.  He forgot his mother instantly, as he had forgotten her on the day of his return, when Sarah had walked on to the terrace—­and into his heart.

“I name no names,” said Sarah, “but I hope I know a hero when I see him; and that man is a hero, though he is—­nothing much to look at.”

It amused her to observe the varying expressions on her lover’s face, which her artless words called forth, one after another.

“If you are really not going to eat any luncheon, Peter,” she said, “I must trouble you to help me to wash up and pack the basket.  The fire is out and the water is cold, but it can’t be helped.  The picnic has been a failure.”

“We have the whole afternoon before us.  I cannot see that there is any hurry,” said Peter, not stirring.

“I didn’t mean to break bad news to you,” said Sarah, “until we’d had a pleasant meal together in comfort, and rested ourselves.  But since you insist on spoiling everything with your horrid premature disclosures, I don’t see why I shouldn’t do the same.  I must be at home by four o’clock, because Aunt Elizabeth is coming to Hewelscourt this very afternoon.”