“By George, you’re in love with him!” he exclaimed, and beneath the coldness of his manner, his heart suffered an incomprehensible pang.  Undoubtedly he had permitted himself to drift into a feeling for Molly, which, had he been wise, he would have strangled speedily in the beginning.  The obstacles which had appeared to make for his safety, had, he realized now, merely afforded shelter to the flame until it had grown strong enough to overleap them.  While he stood there, with his angry gaze on her flushing and paling beauty, he had the helpless sensation of a man who returns at sunrise to find a forest fire raging where he had left a few sticks smouldering at midnight.

“I’m not in love with anybody—­you’ve no right to say so,” she returned, “but I’ll not have him abused.  It’s not true, it’s not just, it’s not generous.”

This was too much for his forbearance, though he told himself that, after all, there was no “getting at” Molly from the surface, and that this outburst might conceal a fancy for himself quite as well as for the miller.  The last idea, while it tantalized him, was not without a pleasant sting for his senses.

“You’re a goose, Molly, and I’ve half a mind to shake you soundly,” he said.  “Since there’s no other way to cure you of this foolish infatuation, I’ll take you down to Old Church to-morrow and let you see with your own eyes.  You’ve forgotten how things look there, that’s my opinion.”

“Oh, Jonathan,” she said, and grew dangerously sweet, while all her soft flushing body leaned toward him.  “You are a perfect dear, aren’t you?”

“I rather think I am, since you put the question.  Molly, will you kiss me?”

She drew back at once, a little deprecating, because she was honestly sorry, since he was so silly as to want to kiss her, that she couldn’t oblige him.  For her own part, she felt, she wouldn’t have cared, but she remembered Abel’s anger because of the kiss by the brook, and the thought hardened her heart.  It was foolish of men to make so much importance of kisses.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t.  Don’t ask me, Jonathan—­all the same you are a darling!”

Then before he could detain her, she had slipped away from him through Kesiah’s door, which she closed after her.

“Aunt Kesiah,” he heard her exclaim joyously, “Jonathan is going to take me to Old Church to spend to-morrow!”

Kesiah, in an ugly grey dressing-gown, tied at the waist with a black cord, was drying Mrs. Gay’s sheets before the radiator.  At Molly’s entrance, she turned, and said warningly, “Patsey is rubbing Angela after her bath.  What was that about Old Church, dear?”

“Jonathan has promised to take me down there to-morrow.”

“To spend the day?  Well, I suppose we may trust you with him.”  From her manner one might have inferred that the idea of not trusting anybody with Jonathan would have been a joke.