“It would be no sacrifice”—­he interrupted her, eagerly—­“No, child!—­it would be pure selfishness!—­for I’m getting old and am lonely—­and—­and I want someone to look after me!” He laughed a little awkwardly.  “Why not come to me and be my daughter?”

She smiled—­caught his hand and kissed it.

“I will be a daughter to you in affection and respect,” she said—­ “But I will not take any benefits from you—­no, none!  Oh, I know well all you could and would do for me!—­you would place me in the highest ranks of that society where you are a leader, and you would surround me with so many advantages and powerful friends that I should forget my duty, which is to work for myself, and owe nothing to any man!  Dear, kind Lord Blythe!—­do not think me ungrateful!  But I have made my own little place in the world, and I must keep it—­independently!  Am I not right, my godmother?”

Miss Leigh looked at her anxiously, and sighed.

“My dear, you must think well about it,” she said—­“Lord Blythe would care for you as his own child, I am sure—­and his home would be a safe and splendid one for you—­but there!—­do not ask me!” and the old lady wiped away one or two trickling tears from her eyes—­“I am selfish!—­and now I know you are Pierce’s daughter I want to keep you for myself!—­to have you near me!—­to look at you and love you!—­”

Her voice broke—­her gaze instinctively wandered to the portrait of the man whose memory she had cherished so long and so fondly.

“What did you think—­what must you have thought the first day you came here when I asked you if you were any relation to Pierce Armitage, and told you that was his portrait!” she said, wistfully.

“I thought that God had guided me to you,” the girl answered, in soft, grave accents—­“And that my father’s spirit had not forsaken me!”

There was a moment’s silence.  Then she spoke more lightly—­

“Dear Lord Blythe,” she said—­“Now that you know so much may I tell you my own story?  It will not take long!  Come and sit here—­ yes!”—­and she placed a comfortable arm-chair for him, while she drew Miss Leigh gently down on the sofa and sat next to her—­“It is nothing of a story!—­my little life is not at all like the lives lived by all the girls of my age that I have ever met or seen—­it’s all in the past, as it were,—­the old, very old past!—­ as far back as the days of Elizabeth!”

She laughed, but there were tears in her eyes—­she brushed them away and holding Miss Leigh’s hand in her own, she told with simple truth and directness the narrative of her childhood’s days —­her life on Briar Farm—­how she had been trained by Priscilla to bake, and brew, and wash and sew,—­and how she had found her chief joy and relaxation from household duties in the reading of the old books she had found stowed away in the dower-chests belonging to the “Sieur Amadis de Jocelin.”

As she pronounced the name with an unconsciously tender accentuation Lord Blythe interrupted her.