they would, in accordance with the secret understanding they had made with each other, have deceived him.  Now there was no deception necessary—­he seemed to have forgotten—­at least for the present—­ his own dearest desire.  With a sigh, half of pain, half of relief, she seated herself at the table, and opening its one deep drawer with a little key which she always wore round her neck, she began to turn over her beloved pile of manuscript, and this occupied her for several minutes.  Presently she looked up, her eyes growing brilliant with thought, and a smile on her lips.

“I really think it might do!” she said, aloud—­“I should not be afraid to try!  Who knows what might happen?  I can but fail—­or succeed.  If I fail, I shall have had my lesson—­if I succeed—­”

She leaned her head on her two hands, ruffling up her pretty hair into soft golden-brown rings.

“If I succeed!—­ah!—­if I do!  Then I’ll pay back everything I owe to Dad and Briar Farm!—­oh, no!  I can never pay back my debt to Briar Farm!—­that would be impossible!  Why, the very fields and trees and flowers and birds have made me happy!—­happier than I shall ever be after I have said good-bye to them all!—­good-bye even to the Sieur Amadis!”

Quick tears sprang to her eyes—­and the tapering light of the candle looked blurred and dim.

“Yes, after all,” she went on, still talking to the air, “it’s better and braver to try to do something in the world, rather than throw myself upon Robin, and be cowardly enough to take him for a husband when I don’t love him.  Just for comfort and shelter and Briar Farm!  It would be shameful.  And I could not marry a man unless I loved him quite desperately!—­I could not!  I’m not sure that I like the idea of marriage at all,—­it fastens a man and woman together for life, and the time might come when they would grow tired of each other.  How cruel and wicked it would be to force them to endure each other’s company when they perhaps wished the width of the world between them!  No—­I don’t think I should care to be married—­certainly not to Robin.”

She put her manuscript by, and shut and locked the drawer containing it.  Then she went to the open lattice window and looked out—­and thought of the previous night, when Robin had swung himself up on the sill to talk to her, and they had been all unaware that Ned Landon was listening down below.  A flush of anger heated her cheeks as she recalled this and all that Robin had told her of the unprepared attack Landon had made upon him and the ensuing fight between them.  But now?  Was it not very strange that Landon should apparently be in such high favour with Hugo Jocelyn that he had actually been allowed to stay in the market-town and enjoy a holiday, which for him only meant a bout of drunkenness?  She could not understand it, and her perplexity increased the more she thought of it.  Leaning far out over the window-sill, she gazed long and lovingly across