But though Letitia might be a romp, she was not a deceitful girl, and she respected her mother.

“Oh, Loveday, how can you suggest such a thing?  It would be telling mamma a lie.  Besides, she would never believe me.”

At this moment Mrs. Veale, hearing voices, opened the door and looked out.

“Letitia!  Come in at once, and do not speak again to Loveday Strick.”

Letitia made round eyes at Loveday and sped up the path.  Loveday pushed open the gate and went out.

She went along the white dusty road, between the hedgerows of elder whose crumpled green leaves were unfolding in the sunny April weather, and her tears were the only rain that smiling country-side had seen for many a day, and they, to match the month, were already drying, for the fire burnt too high in Loveday for tears to hold her long.  She fled along the road at first blindly, then more slowly as the exhaustion that follows on such rage as hers overcame her, and as she paused at last to sink against a mossy bank and rest, a horseman overtook her.

It was Mr. Constantine on his white cob, looking a very dapper gentleman, but Loveday heeded him not, only raising her great black eyes unseeingly at the sound of the hoofs.  Yet that so sombre gaze arrested Mr. Constantine, for it seemed to him an unwonted look in that land of buxom maids.  He drew rein beside her.

“Are you a gipsy, my girl?” he asked her kindly.

Loveday shook her head.

“Come, you have a tongue as well as that handsome pair of eyes, I suppose?  No?”

“My tongue’s wisht, it brings ill-luck,” said Loveday.

Mr. Constantine studied her more attentively.

“If all women thought that, there’d be more happy marriages,” he said, slipping his hand into his pocket.  “You’ve wisdom on your tongue, whether it’s lucky or no.  You say you’re not a gipsy?”

By this time it had dawned on Loveday what, in her absorption, she had not at first noticed, that she was speaking to one of the gentry, and to no less a one than Mr. Constantine, of Constantine.  She stood up and dropped her curtsey out of habit, but sullenly.  Oddly enough, it was the sullenness and not the curtsey that took Mr. Constantine’s fancy.

“No, sir,” said Loveday.  “I’m not a gipsy.  I’m Loveday Strick.”

“Loveday ...” said the gentleman.  “Loveday ...  That’s a beautiful name.  No—­it’s more than a name, it’s a phrase.  A very beautiful phrase.”

Loveday raised her eyes at this strange talk.  Mr. Constantine took his hand out of his pocket and held out a silver sixpence.