It made me shrink back for a minute, and then I said:-- "Oh! Max, have you been ill?" "I do not know. Yes--possibly." "When did you come back?" "I forget--oh! four days ago." "Were you coming to Rockmount?" "Rockmount?--oh! no." He shuddered, and dropped my hand. "Doctor Urquhart seems in a very uncertain frame of mind," said Penelope, severely, from the other side the road. "We had better leave him. Come, Dora." She carried me off, almost forcibly. She was exceedingly displeased. Four days, and never to have come or written! She said it was slighting me and insulting the family. "A man, too, of whose antecedents and connections we knew nothing. He may be a mere adventurer--a penniless Scotch adventurer; Francis always said he was." "Francis is--" But I could not stay to speak of him, or to reply to Penelope's bitter words. All I thought was how to get back to Max, and entreat him to tell me what had happened. He would tell _me_. He loved _me_. So, without any feeling of "proper pride," as Penelope called it, I writhed myself out of her grasp, ran hack to Doctor Urquhart, and took possession of his arm, my arm, which I had a right to. "Is that you, Theodora?" "Yes, it is I." And then I said, I wanted him to go home with me, and tell me what had happened. "Better not; better go home with your sister." "I had rather stay here. I mean to stay here." He stopped, took both my hands, and forced a smile:--"You are the determined little lady you always were; but you do not know what you are saying. You had better go and leave me." I was sure then some great misery was approaching us. I tried to read it in his face. "Do you--" did he still love me; I was about to ask, but there was no need. So my answer, too, was brief and plain. "I never will leave you as long as I live." Then I ran back to Penelope, and told her I should walk home with Doctor Urquhart; he had something to say to me. She tried anger and authority. Both failed. If we had been summer lovers it might have been different, but now in his trouble I seemed to feel Max's right to me and my love, as I had never done before. Penelope might have lectured for everlasting, and I should only have listened, and then gone back to Max's side. As I did. His arm pressed mine close; he did not say a second time, "Leave me." "Now, Max, I want to hear." No answer. "You know there is something, and we shall never be quite happy till it is told. Say it outright; whatever it is, I shall not mind." No answer. "Is it something very terrible?" "Yes." "Something that might come between and part us?" "Yes." I trembled, though not much, having so strong a belief in the impossibility of parting. Yet there must have been an expression I hardly intended in the cry "Oh, Max, tell me," for he again stopped suddenly, and seemed to forget himself in looking at and thinking of me.