“Ah!” she sighed, like one who comes from a winter night into a firelit room.  She was silent, while her eyes drank in its spacious comfort.

“That is your heritage, Elspeth.  That is the birthday gift to which old Studd’s powder-flask is the key.”

“Nay, yours,” she said, “for you won it.”

The words died on her lips, for her eyes were abstracted.  My legs were still feeble, and I had leaned a little on her strong young arm as we came up the hill, but now she left me and climbed on a rock, where she sat like a pixie.  The hardships of the past had thinned her face and deepened her eyes, but her grace was the more manifest.  Fresh and dewy as morning, yet with a soul of steel and fire—­surely no lovelier nymph ever graced a woodland.  I felt how rough and common was my own clay in contrast with her bright spirit.

“Elspeth,” I said hoarsely, “once I told you what was in my heart.”

Her face grew grave.  “And have you not seen what is in mine?” she asked.

“I have seen and rejoiced, and yet I doubt.”

“But why?” she asked again.  “My life is yours, for you have preserved it.  I would be graceless indeed if I did not give my best to you who have given all for me.”

“It is not gratitude I want.  If you are only grateful, put me out of your thoughts, and I will go away and strive to forget you.  There were twenty in the Tidewater who would have done the like.”

She looked down on me from the rock with the old quizzing humour in her eyes.

“If gratitude irks you, sir, what would you have?”

“All,” I cried; “and yet, Heaven knows, I am not worth it.  I am no man to capture a fair girl’s heart.  My face is rude and my speech harsh, and I am damnably prosaic.  I have not Ringan’s fancy, or Grey’s gallantry; I am sober and tongue-tied and uncouth, and my mind runs terribly on facts and figures.  O Elspeth, I know I am no hero of romance, but a plain body whom Fate has forced into a month of wildness.  I shall go back to Virginia, and be set once more at my accompts and ladings.  Think well, my dear, for I will have nothing less than all.  Can you endure to spend your days with a homely fellow like me?”

“What does a woman desire?” she asked, as if from herself, and her voice was very soft as she gazed over the valley.  “Men think it is a handsome face or a brisk air or a smooth tongue.  And some will have it that it is a deep purse or a high station.  But I think it is the honest heart that goes all the way with a woman’s love.  We are not so blind as to believe that the glitter is the gold.  We love romance, but we seek it in its true home.  Do you think I would marry you for gratitude, Andrew?”

“No,” I said.

“Or for admiration?”

“No,” said I.

“Or for love?”

“Yes,” I said, with a sudden joy.

She slipped from the rock, her eyes soft and misty.  Her arms were about my neck, and I heard from her the words I had dreamed of and yet scarce hoped for, the words of the song sung long ago to a boy’s ear, and spoken now with the pure fervour of the heart—­“My dear and only love.”