Slowly Brooke began to realize that he was offering her his love, his protection to them all. It meant pleasant companionship, no more struggling, certainty and reasonable ease, time for study. For an instant she felt weary, overcome, vanquished, and the relief within her grasp seemed almost sweet. The next moment her woman’s nature, frank and real, knew that this was not all, and faltering, yet gaining courage as she spoke, she answered:— “That is not it; you do seem old to me, but if I had loved you, I should not think of that or know it—only that I loved you.” “And how can you know that you do not? you with the transparent nature of a child, how can you judge of these things as well as those who have been tried by fire? Unless—” and his voice dropped and the colour died from his face, leaving it an earthy gray under its coat of tan—“unless there is some one else this time as there was before. Is there this some one, Brooke, and has he stood proof as well?” Brooke’s pallor left her, and strength came to limb and voice. Stepping quickly toward him, she laid her hands on his that were now held clenched, and looking into his face said, in a voice quivering with coming tears: “I need your pity, too. There is another, Robert Stead, but he does not and may never know.” “God help us both,” he murmured, and stooping almost reverently, pressed the kiss upon the folded hands with which a moment before he would have sought to kindle the fire in her lips. For many moments they stood thus, and then Brooke said, with difficulty, “You will come sometimes to see my mother and Adam? Oh, do not let my blindness make you cast him off!” “Yes and no—” Stead answered, as they turned and walked mechanically down the wood lane toward the highway. Once in the open he paused and said, in a voice so low and trembling that it was but a whisper, “I have a report to make to-night, but to-morrow I will go to see your mother.” Then, taking her hand gently: “Do not grieve, gentle one, I was blind too; we are all blind when the heart’s eye is satisfied. At worst, you have done more than you know for me; now, the motive lacking, I shall try to work for work’s sake—and—” pointing eastward—“I shall still share with you the River Kingdom!” No word of this ordeal ever passed the lips of Brooke, but it lay heavily upon her, for she was of the sort who feel that love, honestly proffered, even if unsought, carries an eternal obligation. Yet some one else had seen and shared the secret that lay buried between them, and read the meaning amiss. The farmer-on-shares had crossed the path below on his way from Enoch Fenton’s rye-field at the moment that Stead had stooped to kiss Brooke’s folded hands. CHAPTER XIX SETTERS OF SNARES