"Little fool!" he said, roughly,--"What shame are you talking of? I see no shame in laying claim to a child of my own, even though the claim has no reality. Look at the thing squarely! Here comes a strange man with a baby and leaves it on my hands. You know what a scandalous, gossiping little place this is,--and it was better to say at once the baby was mine than leave it to the neighbours to say the same thing and that I wouldn't acknowledge it. Not a soul about here would have believed the true story if I had told it to them. I've done everything for the best--I know I have. And there'll never be a word said if you marry Robin." Her face had grown very white. She put up her hand to her head and her fingers touched the faded wreath of wild roses. She drew it off and let it drop to the ground. "I shall never marry Robin!" she said, with quiet firmness--"And I will not be considered your illegitimate child any longer. It's cruel of you to have made me live on a lie!--yes, cruel!--though you've been so kind in other things. You don't know who my parents were--you've no right to think they were not honest!" He stared at her amazed. For the first time in eighteen years he began to see the folly of what he had thought his own special wisdom. This girl, with her pale sad face and steadfast eyes, confronted him with the calm reproachful air of an accusing angel. "What right have you?" she went on. "The man who brought me to you,--poor wretched me!--if he was my father, may have been good and true. He said I was motherless; and he, or someone else, sent you money for me till I was twelve. That did not look as if I was forgotten. Now you say the money has stopped--well!--my father may be dead." Her lips quivered and a few tears rolled down her cheeks. "But there is nothing in all this that should make you think me basely born,--nothing that should have persuaded you to put shame upon me!" He was taken aback for a minute by her words and attitude--then he burst out angrily: "It's the old story, I see! Do a good action and it turns out a curse! Basely born! Of course you are basely born, if that's the way you put it! What man alive would leave his own lawful child at a strange farm off the high-road and never claim it again? You're a fool, I tell you! This man who brought you to me was by his look and bearing some fine gentleman or other who had just the one idea in his head--to get rid of an encumbrance. And so he got rid of you--" "Don't go over the whole thing again!" she interrupted, with weary patience-"-I was an encumbrance to him--I've been an encumbrance to you. I'm sorry! But in no case had you the right to set a stigma on me which perhaps does not exist. That was wrong!" She paused a moment, then went on slowly: "I've been a burden on you for six years now,--it's six years, you say, since the money stopped. I wish I could do something in return for what I've cost you all those six years,--I've tried to be useful."