Perhaps the fresh voices breaking on the silence,—­perhaps the tones were less modulated than they had been before, but anyhow Bell Robson’s voice was heard calling Sylvia through the second door, which opened from the dairy to the house-place, in which her mother had been till this moment asleep.  Sylvia darted off in obedience to the call; glad to leave him, as at the moment Kinraid resentfully imagined.  Through the open door he heard the conversation between mother and daughter, almost unconscious of its meaning, so difficult did he find it to wrench his thoughts from the ideas he had just been forming with Sylvia’s bright lovely face right under his eyes.

‘Sylvia!’ said her mother, ‘who’s yonder?’ Bell was sitting up in the attitude of one startled out of slumber into intensity of listening; her hands on each of the chair-arms, as if just going to rise.  ‘There’s a fremd man i’ t’ house.  I heerd his voice!’

‘It’s only—­it’s just Charley Kinraid; he was a-talking to me i’ t’ dairy.’

‘I’ t’ dairy, lass! and how com’d he i’ t’ dairy?’

‘He com’d to see feyther.  Feyther asked him last night,’ said Sylvia, conscious that he could overhear every word that was said, and a little suspecting that he was no great favourite with her mother.

‘Thy feyther’s out; how com’d he i’ t’ dairy?’ persevered Bell.

‘He com’d past this window, and saw yo’ asleep, and didn’t like for t’ waken yo’; so he com’d on to t’ shippen, and when I carried t’ milk in—–­’

But now Kinraid came in, feeling the awkwardness of his situation a little, yet with an expression so pleasant and manly in his open face, and in his exculpatory manner, that Sylvia lost his first words in a strange kind of pride of possession in him, about which she did not reason nor care to define the grounds.  But her mother rose from her chair somewhat formally, as if she did not intend to sit down again while he stayed, yet was too weak to be kept in that standing attitude long.

‘I’m afeared, sir, Sylvie hasn’t told yo’ that my master’s out, and not like to be in till late.  He’ll be main and sorry to have missed yo’.’

There was nothing for it after this but to go.  His only comfort was that on Sylvia’s rosy face he could read unmistakable signs of regret and dismay.  His sailor’s life, in bringing him suddenly face to face with unexpected events, had given him something of that self-possession which we consider the attribute of a gentleman; and with an apparent calmness which almost disappointed Sylvia, who construed it into a symptom of indifference as to whether he went or stayed, he bade her mother good-night, and only said, in holding her hand a minute longer than was absolutely necessary,—­

’I’m coming back ere I sail; and then, may-be, you’ll answer yon question.’

He spoke low, and her mother was rearranging herself in her chair, else Sylvia would have had to repeat the previous words.  As it was, with soft thrilling ideas ringing through her, she could get her wheel, and sit down to her spinning by the fire; waiting for her mother to speak first, Sylvia dreamt her dreams.