A great press stood against the wooden screen that shut the room from the ladies’ parlour next door; filled in three shelves with innocent linen, for this was the only disguise that the place stooped to put on.  You could not swear that mass was said there, but you could swear that it was a place in which mass would very suitably be said.  A couple of benches were against the press, and three or four chairs stood about the floor.

Robin saw her against the light as soon as he came in.  She was still in her blue riding-dress, with the hood on her shoulders, and held her whip in her hand; but he could see no more of her head than the paleness of her face and the gleam on her black hair.

“Well, then?” she whispered sharply; and then:  “Why, what a state you are in!”

“It’s nothing,” said Robin.  “I rolled in a bog-hole.”

She looked at him anxiously.

“You are not hurt?...  Sit down at least.”

He sat down stiffly, and she beside him, still watching to see if he were the worse for his falling.  He took her hand in his.

“I am not fit to touch you,” he said.

“Tell me the news; tell me quickly.”

So he told her; of the wrangle in the parlour and what had passed between his father and him; of his own bitterness; and his letter, and the way in which the old man had taken it.

“He has not spoken to me since,” he said, “except in public before the servants.  Both nights after supper he has sat silent and I beside him.”

“And you have not spoken to him?” she asked quickly.

“I said something to him after supper on Sunday, and he made no answer.  He has done all his writing himself.  I think it is for him to speak now.  I should only anger him more if I tried it again.”

She sighed suddenly and swiftly, but said nothing.  Her hand lay passive in his, but her face was turned now to the bright southerly window, and he could see her puzzled eyes and her down-turned, serious mouth.  She was thinking with all her wits, and, plainly, could come to no conclusion.

She turned to him again.

“And you told him plainly that you and I ... that you and I—­”

“That you and I loved one another?  I told him plainly.  And it was his contempt that angered me.”

She sighed again.

* * * * *

It was a troublesome situation in which these two children found themselves.  Here was the father of one of them that knew, yet not the parents of the other, who should know first of all.  Neither was there any promise of secrecy and no hope of obtaining it.  If she should not tell her parents, then if the old man told them, deception would be charged against her; and if she should tell them, perhaps he would not have done so, and so all be brought to light too soon and without cause.  And besides all this there were the other matters, heavy enough before, yet far more heavy now—­matters of their hopes for the future, the complications with regard to the Religion, what Robin should do, what he should not do.