"I hope she never may, darling. If she did, and if I were ever base enough to accept it, I should have in honor to propose to her by way of gratitude, and because my grandmother's will said so; and I would rather be an organ-grinder, with a monkey tied to my girdle, than be the heir of Castle Brand with Margaret Walsingham for my wife." "Perhaps you misjudge her. Perhaps she was as unwilling to be the obstacle between you and your property as you were that she should be so." "You are generous, my little mother, to defend one of the greediest _kestrels_ who ever struck claw into carrion; but you are not just. I have no doubt that if she ever brought herself to try such an experiment as offering her booty to me, it would be with the assurance that I would refuse it, or with the hope that common decency would urge me to marry her." "She would never marry you," is the quiet and sad rejoinder. "Well, we sha'n't give her the chance. Let us turn from a very groveling subject (to my mind), and get over your next objection to me. We have sent the mercenary one a-flying--now for the next." "That is the only one. Let us leave the subject altogether. You will know more fully what I meant to-morrow." She leaves him hastily--never without a sweet backward glance before--and he is left alone for hours. When she returns it is evening, and the long shadows lie athwart the room, and she flits across the ladders of gloom to him as if innumerable bars were holding them apart. But when they are all passed, and she is close by his side, he scans his Perdita's countenance with a conviction growing within him that bars are yet between them which she cannot pass, and he seizes her hand in sudden foreboding. "What is this, dear child? Why are you so pale and troubled? Have you been weeping?" "Oh, nothing of consequence. Have you been comfortable?" "Everything is of consequence which brings these marks of sorrow to my Perdita's face. Who has been vexing you, child?" "No one--no one, sir." "Who has been grieving you, then?" "I--it is no one's fault. I have only been a little foolish--that is all." She averts her pallid face, and will not be questioned more, but leads him utterly from personal subjects. She has been dear and kind before, but never precisely with the yearning, smothered passion of this last evening; she almost seems to cling to him, as if invisible hands were driving her away, and her pathetic face grows tremulous at every word of tenderness from him. And St. Udo has an indistinct memory of burning tears flashing somewhere while he sleeps, and of soft lips touching his in one meek kiss, and of tender words of blessing and of prayer; and then a shadow falls upon him gray and sad, for the door had shut him in, and the girl is gone. CHAPTER XXXII. SWEET RECOMPENSE.