"Oh! you're not so very much to be pitied," she said; but her hand lighted a moment kindly and shyly on the young man's arm. "Now, if you wouldn't talk about these things, Hubert--do you know what I should be doing?--I should be asking you to do me a service." His manner changed--became businesslike and mannish at once. "Then you'll please sit down again--and tell me what it is," he said. She obeyed. He crossed his knees, and listened. But she had some difficulty in putting it. At last she said, looking away from him: "Do you think, if I proposed it, your mother could bear to have me on a visit to the farm?" "Mother!--you!" he said in astonishment. A hundred notions blazed up in his mind. What on earth did she want to be in those parts again for? "My stepmother is very unwell," she said hurriedly. "It--well, it troubles me not to see her. But I can't go to Bannisdale. If your mother doesn't hate me now, as she did last summer--perhaps--she and Polly would take me in for a while?" He frowned over it--taking the airs of the relative and the counsellor. "Mother didn't say much--well--about your affair. But Polly says she's never spoken again you since. But I expect--you know what she'd be afraid of?" He nodded sagaciously. "I can't imagine," said Laura, instantly. But the stiffening of her slight frame betrayed her. "Why, of course--Miss Laura--you see she'd be afraid of its coming on again." There was silence. The broad rim of Laura's velvet hat hid her face. Hubert began to be uncomfortable. "I don't say as she'd have cause to," he said slowly; "but----" Laura suddenly laughed, and Mason opened his eyes in astonishment. Such a strange little dry sound! "Of course, if your mother were to think such things and to say them to me--every time I went to Bannisdale, I couldn't stay. But I want to see Augustina very, _very_ much." Her voice wavered. "And I could easily go to her--if I were close by--when she was alone. And of course I should be no expense. Your mother knows I have my own money." Hubert nodded. He was trying hard to read her face, but--what the deuce made girls so close? His countenance brightened however. "All right. I'll see to it--I'll manage it--you wait." "Ah! but stop a minute." Her smile shone out from the shadow of the hat. "If I go there's a condition. While I'm there, you mustn't come." The young fellow flung away from her with a passionate exclamation, and her smile dropped--lost itself in a sweet distress, unlike the old wild Laura. "I seem to be falling out with you all the time," she said in haste--"and I don't want to a bit! But indeed--it will be much better. You see, if you were to be coming over to pay visits to me--you would think it your duty to make love to me!" "Well--and if I did?" he said fiercely. "It would only put off the time of our making real friends. And--and--I do care very much for papa's people." The tears leapt to her eyes for the first time. She held out her ungloved hand.