“I should never laugh at that which made you sad,” she said gently.

“Sad?” he rejoined with a short laugh, which had something of his usual bitterness in it.  “Sad?  Mayhap!  Yet I hardly know.  Think you that the poor peasant lad would be sad because he had dreamed that the fairy princess whom he had seen from afar in her radiance, was sweet and gracious to him one midsummer’s day?  It was only a dream, remember:  when he woke she had vanished ... gone out of his sight ... hidden from him by a barrier of gold....  In front of this barrier stood his pride ... which perforce would have to be trampled down and crushed ere he could reach the princess.”

She did not reply, only bent her sweet head, lest he should perceive the tears which had gathered in her eyes.  All round them the wood seemed to have grown darker and more dense, whilst from afar the weird voice of that distant sea murmured of infinity and of the relentlessness of Fate.

They could not see one another very clearly, yet she knew that he was gazing at her with an intensity of love and longing in his heart which caused her own to ache with sympathy; and he knew that she was crying, that there was something in that seemingly brilliant and happy young life, which caused the exquisite head to droop as if under a load of sorrow.

A broken sigh escaped her lips, or was it the sighing of the wind in the elms?

He was smitten with remorse to think that he should have helped to make her cry.

“Sue—­my little, beautiful Sue,” he murmured, himself astonished at his own temerity in thus daring to address her.  It was her grief which had brought her down to his level:  the instinct of chivalry, of protection, of friendship which had raised him up to hers.

“Will you ever forgive me?” he said, “I had no right to speak to you as I have done....  And yet ...”

He paused and she repeated his last two words—­gently, encouragingly.

“And yet ... good master?”

“Yet at times, when I see the crowd of young, empty-headed fortune-seeking jackanapes, who dare to aspire to your ladyship’s hand ...  I have asked myself whether perchance I had the right to remain silent, whilst they poured their farrago of nonsense into your ear.  I love you, Sue!”

“No! no! good master!” she ejaculated hurriedly, while a nameless, inexplicable fear seemed suddenly to be holding her in its grip, as he uttered those few very simple words which told the old, old tale.

But those words once uttered, Richard felt that he could not now draw back.  The jealously-guarded secret had escaped his lips, passion refused to be held longer in check.  A torrent of emotion overmastered him.  He forgot where he was, the darkness of the night, the lateness of the hour, the melancholy murmur of the wind in the trees, he forgot that she was rich and he a poor dependent, he only remembered that she was exquisitely fair and that he—­poor fool!—­was mad enough to worship her.