"I do not desire to make my tale longer than need is, dear hearts," pursueth she, "and therefore I will but tell you that in course of time, with assent of my father and his mother, my cousin _Leonard_ and I were troth-plight. I loved him, methinks, as well as it was in woman to love man: and--I thought he loved me. I never knew a man who had such a tongue to cajole a woman's heart. He could talk in such a fashion that thou shouldst feel perfectly assured that he loved thee with all his heart, and none but thee: and ere the sun had set, he should have given the very same certainty to _Nan_ at the farm, and to _Mall_ down in the glen. I believe he did rarely make love to so little as one woman at once. He liked--he once told your father so much--a choice of strings for his bow. But of all this, at first, lost in my happy love, I knew nothing. My love to him was so true and perfect, that the very notion that his could be lesser than so never entered mine head. It was _Anstace_ who saw the clouds gathering before any other--_Anstace_, to whom, in her helpless suffering, God gave a strange power of reading hearts. There came a strange maiden on the scene--a beautiful maiden, with fair eyes and gleaming hair--and _Leonard's_ heart was gone from me for ever. Gone!--had it ever come? I cannot tell. May-be some little corner of his heart was mine, once on a time--I doubt if I had more. He had every corner and every throb of mine. Howbeit, when this maid--" "How was she called, Aunt _Joyce_?" saith _Milly_, in rather an hard voice. Aunt _Joyce_ did not make answer for a moment: and, looking up on her, I saw drawn brows and flushed cheeks.