Priscilla looked at him, pityingly, tears springing again to her eyes.

“Aye, you’ve lost the love o’ your heart, my lad!  I know that well enough!” she said.  “An’ it’s mighty hard on you!  But you must be a man an’ turn to work as though nowt had happened.  There’s the farm—­”

“Yes, there’s the farm,” he repeated, absently.  “But what do I care for the farm without her!  Priscilla, you will stay with me?”

“Stay with you?  Surely I will, Mister Robin!  Where should an old woman like me go to at this time o’ day!” and Priscilla took his hand and clasped it affectionately.  “Don’t you fear!  My place is in Briar Farm till the Lord makes an end of me!  And if the child comes back at any hour of the day or night, she’ll find old Priscilla ready to welcome her,—­ready an’ glad an’ thankful to see her pretty face again.”

Here, unable to control her sobs, she turned away and made a hasty retreat into the kitchen.

He did not follow her, but acting on the sudden impulse of his mind he entered the house and went up to Innocent’s deserted room.  He opened the door hesitatingly,—­the little study, in its severe simplicity and neatness, looked desolate—­like an empty shrine from which the worshipped figure had been taken.  He trod softly across the floor, hushing his footsteps, as though some one slept whom he feared to wake, and his eyes wandered from one familiar object to another till they rested on the shelves where the old vellum-bound books, which Innocent had loved and studied so much, were ranged in orderly rows.  Taking one or two of them out he glanced at their title-pages;—­he knew that most of them were rare and curious, though his Oxford training had not impressed him with as great a love of things literary as it might or should have done.  But he realised that these strange black-letter and manuscript volumes were of unique value, and that their contents, so difficult to decipher, were responsible for the formation of Innocent’s guileless and romantic spirit, colouring her outlook on life with a glamour of rainbow brilliancy which, though beautiful, was unreal.  One quaint little book he opened had for its title—­ “Ye Whole Art of Love, Setting Forth ye Noble Manner of Noble Knights who woulde serve their Ladies Faithfullie in Death as in Lyfe”—­this bore the date of 1590.  He sighed as he put it back in its place.

“Ah, well,” he said, half aloud, “these books are hers, and I’ll keep them for her—­but I believe they’ve done her a lot of mischief, and I don’t love them!  They’ve made her see the world as it is not—­and life as it never will be!  And she has got strange fancies into her head—­fancies which she will run after like a child chasing pretty butterflies—­and when the butterflies are caught, they die, much to the child’s surprise and sorrow!  My poor little Innocent!  She has gone out alone into the world, and the world will break her heart!  Oh dearest little love, come back to me!”