He had kissed Joan’s cold cheek, he had kissed her hand, but her lips had not been for him.  He had wondered once if they ever would be, and he had cared a great deal; now he ceased to wonder.

“I shall never kiss Gipsy again,” he thought, and, turning, saw her.

“So you—­you didn’t go to Church, Gipsy?”

“I thought you had gone to Starden.”

They stood and looked at one another.

“No.  I don’t think I shall go to Starden to-day.”

“But they expect you.”

“I—­I don’t think I shall go to-day, Gipsy.  Shall we go for a walk across the fields?”

“You ought to go to Starden,” she said.  “She—­she will expect you.”

But a spirit of reckless defiance had come to him.

“She won’t miss me if I don’t go.”

“No, she won’t miss you,” the girl said softly, and her voice shook.

“So—­so come with me, Gipsy girl.”

“If you wish it.”

“You know I do.”

Yet when they went together across the fields, when they came to the edge of the hop-garden and saw the neatly trailing vines, which this year looked better and more promising than he could ever remember before, they had nothing to say to one another, not a word.  Once he took her hand and held it for a moment, then let it go again; and at the touch of her he thrilled, little dreaming how her heart responded.

He scarcely looked at her.  If he had, he might have seen a glow in her cheeks, a brightness in her eyes, the brightness born of a new and wonderful hope.

“After all, after all,” the girl was thinking.  “I believe he cares for me a little—­not so much as he loves her, but a little, a little, and I love him.”

Connie smiled on them as they came in together.  It was as she liked to see them.  She noticed the deep colouring in the girl’s cheeks, the new brightness in her eyes, and Connie, who always acted on generous impulses, kissed her.

“What’s that for?” Johnny cried.  “Haven’t you one for me too, Con?”

“Always, always,” she said.  She put her arms about his neck and hugged him.

It seemed as if the clouds that had so long overcast this little house had drifted away this calm Sabbath day, and the sun was shining down gloriously on them.

For some time Connie had been quietly watching the girl.  There came back into her memory a promise given long ago.  “I will do nothing, nothing, Con, unless I tell you first.”

She knew Ellice for the soul of honour; she had felt safe, and now she was waiting.

“Well, Ellice, have you anything to say to me?” Johnny was gone after dinner to his tiny study to wrestle with letters and figures that he abhorred.

“Yes,” Ellice said.

“I thought you had—­well?”

“I am going to Starden,” the girl said.  “I am going to Starden this afternoon, Con.”

“What for?”

“To see—­her?”