his suit. Alice received him cordially: any
change was better than none.

"Take me home, Carl," whispered she,
forgetting the scene before she left her
uncle's house, and reverting to cousinly
familiarity.

He seemed gratified. "Are you softening
towards me, Alice?" he asked, gently.

She drew up her slender shape with an air
of indescribable haughtiness, and, looking
him in the face, said, "So I have been sent
here for a punishment, as a banishment?
Very well, Carl Branston; I will stay here
till doomsday rather than be your wife. Did
you imagine that I did not loathe you
sufficiently before, that you descend to
persecution?" And she turned from him as one
would turn from some villainous creeping
thing, and left him feeling a very mean and
beaten scoundrel indeed. Carl had not the
courage left to present the fine gauds he had
brought for her; he returned to London
with them in his pocket, and venomed rage
in his heart.

Margery Pilkington was, according to her
own statement, a martyr to tic douloureux;
she was afflicted with it the next day, and,
after a morning of rampant ill-humour, during
which it is a question whether she or Alice
suffered most, she retired to her chamber
and shut herself up. Alice put on her hat
with a sigh of relief, and sauntered away to
the river-side. Beckford river was a famous
trout-stream; what more natural than that
when she was come to a pretty bend near the
wood she should see a man fishing, and that
this man should be cousin Robin? and what
again more natural than that meeting him
thus accidentally, they should each exclaim
how glad they were, and then wander on
together through the shady glades of Beechwood,
talking about all sorts of interesting
things which nobody need listen to unless
they like.

"I heard of you yesterday," said Robin,
"and made my way down here directly.
Why have they banished thee, my pretty
Alice?"

Alice told him something, and he guessed
the rest.

"That brother of mine is a sorry knave;
I'll disown him!" cried he, with a laugh;
but she knew very well that Robin would
have shared his last crumb with his greatest
enemy; he could not remember an injury,
and, as for being jealous of Carl's attachment
to Alice, he thought it just the most natural
thing in the world.

Robin had a very pleasant voice, full and
rich in tone, but he could sink it to the
softest of whispers, and what he said next,
the little birds in the tree-tops could scarcely
have heard if they had listened with all their
might. It was, "Alice, love me; let me take
care of thee; I've loved thee sixteen years,
ever since they brought thee, a little shy
lassie that could scarce crawl, and set thee
down between me and Carl, and told us to be
brothers to thee."

Alice was not coquettish, but there was a
mischievous sparkle in her eyes as she said:
"And you fought the next day who should
love me best."

"And I beat Carl. Answer me, Alice;
will you love me?"

"I think you have earned some reward by
your faithfulness, Robin," said she with a
blushing smile.

"Then promise to give it me."

He held out his hand, and she put hers
into it like a tiny fair dove hiding in its nest,
and as there was none but the wood creatures
to behold, and the winds to whisper it, he
made her soft warm lips seal the promise
then and there made and recorded at once.

It was mid-afternoon when they met; it
was shading into twilight when they
separated at the top of Wood-lane; Alice crossing
the Green, armed at all points against Miss
Margery Pilkington's ill-humours, and Robin,
not less blissful, wending towards his home.
Before parting Robin pleaded for permission
to beard the lioness in her den, but Alice
said, not for worlds; so he mentioned the
probability of his fishing all next day, and
she hinted that most likely she should stroll
on the banks at some hour between sunrise
and sunset. "The river-side is always so
pleasant in June!" said she, archly.

When she came into Margery Pilkington's
puritanical little parlour she looked as much
out of character as a portrait of Hebe in a
cellar. She had a rich carnation on her lip
and a rose on her cheek, as bright as ever
bloomed in garden, and a lustre in her large
eyes lighted at love's own torch. Her
protectress sat there with her face swathed up
in flannel like a corpse, and wearing her most
awful scowl. She looked up at Alice, and
snorted angry disapproval of her appearance.

"You have been in fool's paradise," said
she grimly; "Carl yesterday, Robin to-day;
you'll go straight back to your uncle Branston
to-morrow, treacherous girl."

Alice blushed a confession, and begged to
stay where she was.

"I like the country: Beckford is pretty;
let me stay, Miss Margery; it is nicer being
here than in London."

"I dare say it is—Beechwood and Robin
Branston understood," retorted Mistress
Pilkington. "You are an ungrateful
creature; I cannot think where you expect
to go to when you die. Has not Ike Branston
been a father to you?"

"No."

"No! What do you mean? He has fed
you, clothed you, lodged you for sixteen
years, educated you."

"Robin taught me all I know."

"And so, forsooth, the pupil must show her
gratitude to her master by loving him?
Nothing less will serve?"

"Nothing less."