He stopped, deterred by her look of sadness.

“Dear Robin,” she said, very gently—­“would you marry a girl who cannot love you as a wife should love?  Won’t you understand that if I could and did love you I should be happier than I am?—­though now, even if I loved you with all my heart, I would not marry you.  How could I?  I am nothing—­I have no name—­no family—­and can you think that I would bring shame upon you?  No, Robin!—­never!  I know what your Uncle Hugo wishes—­and oh!—­if I could only make him happy I would do it!—­but I cannot—­it would be wrong of me—­and you would regret it—­”

“I should never regret it,” he interrupted her, quickly.  “If you would be my wife, Innocent, I should be the proudest, gladdest man alive!  Ah, dear!—­do put all your fancies aside and try to realise what good you would be doing to the old man if he felt quite certain that you would be the little mistress of the old farm he loves so much—­I will not speak of myself—­you do not care for me!—­but for him—­”

She looked up at him with a sudden light in her eyes.

“Could we not pretend?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Why, pretend that we’re engaged—­just to satisfy him.  Couldn’t you make things easy for me that way?”

“I don’t quite understand,” he said, with a puzzled air—­“How would it make things easy?”

“Why, don’t you see?” and she spoke with hurried eagerness—­“When he comes home to-night let him think it’s all right—­and then—­ then I’ll run away by myself—­and it will be my fault—­”

“Innocent!  What are you talking about?”—­and he flushed with vexation.  “My dear girl, if you dislike me so much that you would rather run away than marry me, I won’t say another word about it.  I’ll manage to smooth things over with my uncle for the present—­ just to prevent his fretting himself—­and you shall not be worried—­”

“You must not be worried either,” she said.  “You will not understand, and you do not think!—­but just suppose it possible that, after all, my own parents did remember me at last and came to look after me—­and that they were perhaps dreadful wicked people—­”

Robin smiled.

“The man who brought you here was a gentleman,” he said—­“Uncle Hugo told me so this morning, and said he was the finest-looking man he had ever seen.”

Innocent was silent a moment.

“You think he was a ‘gentleman’ to desert his own child?” she asked.

Robin hesitated.

“Dear, you don’t know the world,” he said—­“There may have been all sorts of dangers and difficulties—­anyhow, I don’t bear him any grudge!  He gave you to Briar Farm!”

She sighed, and made no response.  Inadvertently they had walked beyond the orchard and were now on the very edge of the little thicket where the tomb of the Sieur Amadis de Jocelin glimmered pallidly through the shadow of the leaves.  Innocent quickened her steps.