“You’ve nothing to cry about,” she told me fiercely, “nothing, but I sometimes feel as if I could weep rivers of tears!”

I realized that I must be careful, so I changed the subject.  “William,” I said after a pause, “is worrying about a man who is hunting over the grounds.”

“He told me.  I can’t understand why any one should trespass when the place is posted.  I sent William to tell him, but it didn’t seem to have any effect.  I haven’t heard him shoot.  When I do, I shall go out and speak to him myself.”

I wondered if Fate were going to settle it in that way, and I wondered too if it would be breaking my promise to tell him to shoot!  We sewed in silence for a while, but Lady Crusoe was restless.  At last she wandered to the window.  It was a long French window which opened on a balcony.  She parted the velvet curtains and looked out.  “There he is again,” she said, with irritation, “by the gate with his gun and dog—­”

I rose and joined her.  The man stood by the gate-post, and the dog sat at his feet.  They might have been a pair of statues planted on the round top of the hill, with the valleys rolling away beneath them and the mountain peaks and the golden sky beyond.  Lady Crusoe was much stirred up over it.

“I’ll send William again, when he comes with our tea.  I won’t have my wild things shot.  There was a covey of partridges on the lawn this morning, and my squirrels come up to the porch to be fed.  Men are cruel creatures with their guns and their traps.”

“Women are cruel, too,” I told her, and now I took my courage in my hands.  “Suppose, oh, suppose, that the mother robin had stolen her nest and had never let the father robin share her happiness, wouldn’t you call that cruel?”

“What do you mean?” her voice shook.

“You have stolen your—­nest—­”

“Why shouldn’t I steal it?  I had always felt that when I wanted a real home it would be here.  And the time had come when I wanted a—­home.  So I planned to come—­with him.  It was to be my surprise—­he doesn’t even know that the old place belongs to me.  He thought it was just another of my restless demands, but he let me have my way.  We had friends with us when we started; they left us at Washington.  It was after we were alone that—­we quarreled—­and I ran away.  I left a note and told him that I had gone to France.  I suppose he followed and didn’t find me.  I am not even sure that he wants to find me.”

“Do you want to be found?”

“I don’t know.  I’d rather not talk about it.”

William came in with the tea and was told to send the intruder off.

“I done sent him, Miss Lily,” he said, with dignity, “but he ain’t gwine to go.  He say he ain’t, and I kain’t make him.”

She went again to the window, and this time she drew back the faded hangings and stepped out on the balcony.

I heard her utter a cry; then the whole room seemed to whirl about me as she came in, dragging the curtains together behind her.  Every drop of blood was drained from her face.