‘Think yo’ that if he were not dead he wouldn’t ha’ written ere this to some one of his kin, if not to thee?  Yet none of his folk Newcassel-way but believe him dead.’

‘So Kester says,’ sighed Sylvia.

Philip took heart.  He put his arm softly round her again, and murmured—­

‘My lassie, try not to think on them as is gone, as is dead, but t’ think a bit more on him as loves yo’ wi’ heart, and soul, and might, and has done iver sin’ he first set eyes on yo’.  Oh, Sylvie, my love for thee is just terrible.’

At this moment Dolly Reid was seen at the back-door of the farmhouse, and catching sight of Sylvia, she called out—­

’Sylvia, thy mother is axing for thee, and I cannot make her mind easy.’

In a moment Sylvia had sprung up from her seat, and was running in to soothe and comfort her mother’s troubled fancies.

Philip sate on by the well-side, his face buried in his two hands.  Presently he lifted himself up, drank some water eagerly out of his hollowed palm, sighed, and shook himself, and followed his cousin into the house.  Sometimes he came unexpectedly to the limits of his influence over her.  In general she obeyed his expressed wishes with gentle indifference, as if she had no preferences of her own; once or twice he found that she was doing what he desired out of the spirit of obedience, which, as her mother’s daughter, she believed to be her duty towards her affianced husband.  And this last motive for action depressed her lover more than anything.  He wanted the old Sylvia back again; captious, capricious, wilful, haughty, merry, charming.  Alas! that Sylvia was gone for ever.

But once especially his power, arising from whatever cause, was stopped entirely short—­was utterly of no avail.

It was on the occasion of Dick Simpson’s mortal illness.  Sylvia and her mother kept aloof from every one.  They had never been intimate with any family but the Corneys, and even this friendship had considerably cooled since Molly’s marriage, and most especially since Kinraid’s supposed death, when Bessy Corney and Sylvia had been, as it were, rival mourners.  But many people, both in Monkshaven and the country round about, held the Robson family in great respect, although Mrs. Robson herself was accounted ‘high’ and ‘distant;’ and poor little Sylvia, in her heyday of beautiful youth and high spirits, had been spoken of as ‘a bit flighty,’ and ’a set-up lassie.’  Still, when their great sorrow fell upon them, there were plenty of friends to sympathize deeply with them; and, as Daniel had suffered in a popular cause, there were even more who, scarcely knowing them personally, were ready to give them all the marks of respect and friendly feeling in their power.  But neither Bell nor Sylvia were aware of this.  The former had lost all perception of what was not immediately before her; the latter shrank from all encounters of any kind with a sore heart, and sensitive avoidance