She smiled—­and her eyes showed him what a stupid blunder he had made.

“Do they?” she queried, softly—­“I am so glad, Robin!  For you will find it easy then to love somebody else instead of me!”

He flushed, vexedly.

“I didn’t mean that—­” he began.

“No?  I think you did!—­but of course if you had thought twice you wouldn’t have said it!  It was uttered quite truly and naturally, Robin!—­don’t regret it!  Only I want to explain to you that the Sieur Amadis was not like that—­he loved just once—­and the lady he loved must have been a very beautiful woman who had plenty of admirers and did not care for him at all.  All he writes proves that.  He is always grieved to the heart about it.  Still he loved her—­and he seems glad to have loved her, though it was all no use.  And he kept a little chronicle of his dreams and fancies—­all that he felt and thought about,—­it is beautifully and tenderly written all in quaint old French.  I had some trouble to make it out—­but I did at last—­every word—­and when he made up his mind to marry, he finished the little book and never wrote another word in it.  Shall I tell you what were the last lines he wrote?”

“It wouldn’t be any use,” he answered, kissing again the hand he held—­“I don’t understand French.  I’ve never even tried to learn it.”

She laughed.

“I know you haven’t!  But you’ve missed a great deal, Robin!—­you have really!  When I made up my mind to find out all the Sieur Amadis had written, I got Priscilla to buy me a French dictionary and grammar and some other French lesson-books besides—­then I spelt all the words carefully and looked them all up in the dictionary, and learned the pronunciation from one of the lesson-books—­and by-and-bye it got quite easy.  For two years at least it was dreadfully hard work—­but now—­well!—­I think I could almost speak French if I had the chance!”

“I’m sure you could!” said Robin, looking at her, admiringly—­ “You’re a clever little girl and could do anything you wanted to.”

Her brows contracted a little,—­the easy lightness of his compliment had that air of masculine indifference which is more provoking to an intelligent woman than downright contradiction.  The smile lingered in her eyes, however,—­a smile of mingled amusement and compassion.

“Well, I wanted to understand the writing of the Sieur Amadis,” she went on, quietly—­“and when I could understand them I translated them.  So I can tell you the last words he wrote in his journal—­just before he married,—­in fact on the very eve of his marriage-day—­” She paused abruptly, and looked for a moment at the worn and battered tomb of the old knight, green with moss and made picturesque by a trailing branch of wild roses that had thrown itself across the stone effigy in an attempt to reach some of its neighbours on the opposite side.  Robin followed her gaze with his own, and for a moment was more than usually impressed by the calm, almost stern dignity of the recumbent figure.