“What! leave you to walk alone, and at such an hour, my darling?” It was nearly two o’clock.

“Why not?” she cried, turning upon him fiercely.  “I am afraid of none but you, and of those whom I should love, but of whom you make me afraid.”  Then up the white road she glided like a ghost.

Richard watched her with anxious eyes as long as he could, then sat upon the stile, a prey to apprehensions.  To what dangers might he not have already exposed her by his inconsiderate pursuit!  Suppose some eye had seen them on their way, or should meet her now on her return!  Suppose her own fears should prove true, and her father had already discovered their absence!  His thoughts were loyally occupied with Harry alone; but the peril to himself was considerable.  It was impossible that he could satisfactorily explain his companionship with the inn-keeper’s daughter at such a place and hour.  The truth would never be believed, even if it could be related.  She had got home by this time; but had she done so unobserved?  Otherwise, it was more than probable that he should find two Cornish giants waiting, if not “to grind his bones to make their bread,” at least to break them with their cudgels.  In their eyes he would seem to have been guilty of a deliberate seduction, the one of his daughter, the other of his destined bride.  Yet, not to return to Gethin in such a case would be worse than cowardice, since his absence would be sure to be associated with Harry’s midnight expedition.  He had hitherto only despised this Trevethick and his friend, but now, since he feared them, he began to hate them.  Bodily discomfort combined with his mental disquietude.  For the first time he felt the keenness of the moonlit air, and shivered in it, notwithstanding the hasty strides which he now was taking homeward.  Upon the hill-top he paused, and glanced about him.  All was as it had been when he set out; there was no sign of change nor movement.  The inn, with its drawn-down blinds, seemed itself asleep.  The front-door had been left ajar, doubtless by Harry; he pushed his way in, and silently shut it to, and shot the bolt; then he took off his boots, and walked softly up stairs in his stockinged feet.  He knew that there was at least one person in that house who was listening with beating heart for every noise.

The ways of clandestine love have been justly described as “full of cares and troubles, of fears and jealousies, of impatient waiting, tediousness of delay, and sufferance of affronts, and amazements of discovery;” and though Richard Yorke had never read those words of our great English divine, he had already begun to exemplify them, and was doomed to prove them to the uttermost.

CHAPTER XIX.

RICHARD BURNS HIS BOATS.