“Never shame.”

“What is wrong is shame!  Cannot you see how unworthy it would be in me, and how it would grieve my uncle that I should have done such a thing?”

“Love would override scruples.”

“Not true love.”

“True!  Then you own to some love for me, Anne.”

“I do—­not—­know.  I have guarded—­I mean—­cast away—­I mean—­never entertained any such thought ever since I was old enough to know how wicked it would be.”

“Anne!  Anne!” (in an undertone very like rapture), “you have confessed all!  It is no sin now.  Even you cannot say so.”

She hung her head and did not answer, but silence was enough for him.

“It is enough!” he said; “you will wait.  I shall know you are waiting till I return in such sort that nothing can be denied me.  Let me at least have that promise.”

“You need not fear,” murmured Anne.  “How could I need?  The secret would withhold me, were there nothing else.”

“And there is something else?  Eh, sweetheart?  Is that all I am to be satisfied with?”

“Oh sir!—­Mr. Archfield, I mean—­O Charles!” she stammered.

Mr. Fellowes turned round to consult his pupil as to whether the halt should be made at the village whose peaked roofs were seen over the fruit trees.

But when Anne was lifted down from the steed it was with no grasp of common courtesy, and her hand was not relinquished till it had been fervently kissed.

Charles did not again torment her with entreaties to share his exile.  Mayhap he recognised, though unwillingly, that her judgment had been right, but there was no small devotion in his whole demeanour, as they dined, rode, and rested on that summer’s day amid fields of giant haycocks, and hostels wreathed with vines, with long vistas of sleek cows and plump dappled horses in the sheds behind.  The ravages of war had lessened as they rode farther from the frontier, and the rich smiling landscape lay rejoicing in the summer sunshine; the sturdy peasants looked as if they had never heard of marauders, as they herded their handsome cattle and responded civilly when a draught of milk was asked for the ladies.

There was that strange sense of Eden felicity that sometimes comes with the knowledge that the time is short for mutual enjoyment in full peace.  Charles and Anne would part, their future was undefined; but for the present they reposed in the knowledge of each other’s hearts, and in being together.  It was as in their childhood, when by tacit consent he had been Anne’s champion from the time she came as a little Londoner to be alarmed at rough country ways, and to be easily scared by Sedley.  It had been then that Charles had first awakened to the chivalry of the better part of boyhood’s nature, instead of following his cousin’s lead, and treating girls as creatures meant to be bullied.  Many a happy reminiscence was shared between the two as