She gave a shivering sigh.

“Do you—­can you care?—­Now?” she asked.

“Of course!  What is there in all this story that can change my love for you?  That you are not my cousin?—­that my uncle is not your own father?  What does that matter to me?  You are someone else’s child, and if we never know who that someone is, why should we vex ourselves about it?  You are you!—­you are Innocent!—­the sweetest, dearest little girl that ever lived, and I adore you!  What difference does it make that you are not Uncle Hugo’s daughter?”

“It makes a great difference to me,” she answered, sadly—­“I do not belong any more to the Sieur Amadis de Jocelin!”

Robin stared, amazed—­then smiled.

“Why, Innocent!” he exclaimed—­“Surely you’re not worrying your mind over that old knight, dead and gone more than three hundred years ago!  Dear little goose!  How on earth does he come into this trouble of yours?”

“He comes in everywhere!” she replied, clasping and unclasping her hands nervously as she spoke.  “You don’t know, Robin!—­you would never understand!  But I have loved the Sieur Amadis ever since I can remember;—­I have talked to him and studied with him!—­I have read his old books, and all the poems he wrote—­and he seemed to be my friend!  I thought I was born of his kindred—­and I was proud of it—­and I felt it would be my duty to live at Briar Farm always because he would wish his line quite unbroken—­and I think—­ perhaps—­yes, I think I might have married you and been a good wife to you just for his sake!—­and now it is all spoiled!—­ because though you will be the master of Briar Farm, you will not be the lineal descendant of the Sieur Amadis!  No,—­it is finished!—­all finished with your Uncle Hugo!—­and the doctors say he can only live a year!”

Her grief was so touching and pathetic that Robin could not find it in his heart to make a jest of the romance she had woven round the old French knight whose history had almost passed into a legend.  After all, what she said was true—­the line of the Jocelyn family had been kept intact through three centuries till now—­and a direct heir had always inherited Briar Farm.  He himself had taken a certain pride in thinking that Uncle Hugo’s “love-child,” as he had believed her to be, was at any rate, love-child or no, born of the Jocelyn blood—­and that when he married her, as he hoped and fully purposed to do, he would discard his own name of Clifford and take that of Jocelyn, in order to keep the continuity of associations unbroken as far as possible.  All these ideas were put to flight by Innocent’s story, and, as the position became more evident to him, the smiling expression on his face changed to one of gravity.

“Dear Innocent,” he said, at last—­“Don’t cry!  It cuts me to the heart!  I would give my very life to save you from a sorrow—­you know I would!  If you ever thought, as you say, that you could or would marry me for the sake of the Sieur Amadis, you might just as well marry me now, even though the Sieur Amadis is out of it.  I would make you so happy!  I would indeed!  And no one need ever know that you are not really the lineal descendant of the Knight—­”