"Never mind that, _Milly_. I shall call her _Mary_. It was not her name. Well, when this maid first came to visit us, and I brought her above to my sister, that as ye know might never arise from the couch whereon she lay--I something marvelled to see how quick from her face to mine went _Anstace'_ eyes, and back again to her. I knew, long after, what had been her thought. She had no faith in _Leonard_, and she guessed quick enough that this face should draw him away from me. She tried to prepare me as she saw it coming. But I was blind and deaf. I shut mine eyes tight, and put my fingers in mine ears. I would not face the cruel truth. For _Mary_ herself, I am well assured she meant me no ill, nor did she see that any ill was wrought till all were o'er. She did but divert her with _Leonard's_ words, caring less for him than for them. She was vain, and loved flatteries, and he saw it, and gave her them by the bushel. She was a child laking with a firebrand, and never knew what it were until she burnt her fingers. And at last, maids, mine eyes were forced open. _Leonard_ himself told me, and in so many words, what I had refused to hear from others,--that he loved well enough the gold that was like to be mine, but he did not love me. There were bitter words on both sides, but mine were bitterest. And so, at last, we parted. I could show you the flag on which he stood when I saw his face for the last time--the last, until I saw it yester-morrow. Others had seen him, and knew him not, through the changes of years. Even your father did not know him, though they had been bred up well-nigh as brothers. But mine eyes were sharper. I had not borne that face in mine heart, and seen it in my dreams, for all these years, that I should look on him and not know it. I knew the look in his eyes, the poise of his head, the smile on his lips, too well--too well! I reckon that between that day and this, a thousand women may have had that smile upon them. But I thought of the day when I had it--when it was the one light of life to me--for I had not then beheld the Light of the World. _Milly_, didst thou think me cruel yester-morrow?--cold, and hard, and stern? Ah, men do think a woman so,--and women at times likewise--think her words hard, when she has to crush her heart down ere she can speak any word at all--think her eyes icy cold, when behind them are a storm of passionate tears that must not be shed then, and she has to keep the key hard turned lest they burst the door open. Ah, young maids, you look upon me as who should say, that I am an old woman from whom such words are strange to you. They be fit only for a young lass's lips, forsooth? Childre, you wis not yet that the hot love of youth is nought to be compared to the yearning love of age,--that the maid that loveth a man whom she first met a month since cannot bear the rushlight unto her that has shrined him in her heart for thirty years."