“Hide there again, Grizel,” he cried to her, little Tommy cried to her, Stroke the Jacobite, her captain, cried to the Lady Griselda; and he disappeared, and presently marched down the path with an imaginary Elspeth by his side.  “I love you both, Elspeth,” he was going to say, “and my love for the one does not make me love the other less”; but he glanced at Grizel, and she was leaning forward to catch his words as if this were no play, but life or death, and he knew what she longed to hear him say, and he said it:  “I love you very much, Elspeth, but however much I love you, it would be idle to pretend that I don’t love Grizel more.”

A stifled cry of joy came from a clump of whin hard by, and they were man and woman again.

“Did you not know it, Grizel?”

“No, no; you never told me.”

“I never dreamed it was necessary to tell you.”

“Oh, if you knew how I have longed that it might be so, yes, and sometimes hated Elspeth because I feared it could not be!  I have tried so hard to be content with second place.  I have thought it all out, and said to myself it was natural that Elspeth should be first.”

“My tragic love,” he said, “I can see you arguing in that way, but I don’t see you convincing yourself.  My passionate Grizel is not the girl to accept second place from anyone.  If I know anything of her, I know that.”

To his surprise, she answered softly:  “You are wrong.  I wonder at it myself, but I had made up my mind to be content with second place, and to be grateful for it.”

“I could not have believed it!” he cried.

“I could not have believed it myself,” said she.

“Are you the Grizel——­” he began.

“No,” she said, “I have changed a little,” and she looked pathetically at him.

“It stabs me,” he said, “to see you so humble.”

“I am humbler than I was,” she answered huskily, but she was looking at him with the fondest love.

“Don’t look at me so, Grizel,” he implored.  “I am unworthy of it.  I am the man who has made you so humble.”

“Yes,” she answered, and still she looked at him with the fondest love.  A film came over his eyes, and she touched them softly with her handkerchief.

“Those eyes that but a little while ago were looking so coldly at you!” he said.

“Dear eyes!” said she.

“Though I were to strike you——­” he cried, raising his hand.

She took the hand in hers and kissed it.

“Has it come to this!” he said, and as she could not speak, she nodded.  He fell upon his knees before her.

“I am glad you are a little sorry,” she said; “I am a little sorry myself.”

CHAPTER XIX

OF THE CHANGE IN THOMAS