‘Why did you not come?’ said Adrienne, going straight up to Myles. ‘Why have you never been to see me? I have waited and waited, until I could wait no longer.’ He stood, crimson, unable to speak a word, but looking at her with eyes that must have told their tale--which must have warned her had she been less excited and earnest. ‘How could you go and do a thing like that, and then never take any further notice of me?’ she continued. ‘I have thought of nothing else since I heard of it. It was most wonderfully foolish--oh, very foolish; but oh, I do thank you, and honour you for it, with all my heart. It is exactly what such _canaille_ deserve, and it was nobly done--it was indeed!’ ‘Miss Blisset ... you ... you--it was nothing. Any one would have done it. I couldn’t have rested or slept till I had punished him. I was obliged to do it.’ ‘Ah, that is how _you_ put it, no doubt--but any one would not have felt so--only you would. I can never thank you--never.’ ‘Well, don’t then! I--it makes me ashamed of myself--it does indeed,’ said he, earnestly. ‘But whativer is it o’ about, miss?’ said Mary, putting into words her own and Edmund’s boundless astonishment. ‘Is it possible,’ said Adrienne, turning with wide-open eyes to Myles--‘is it possible that you have never told them? Did he not tell you?’ ‘Nay, he’s ne’er told us nowt,’ said Mary. ‘I never heard of anything so extraordinary,’ said Adrienne, with still a vibration in her voice, which showed how much she was moved. ‘You must have heard about that man--Spenceley--who insulted me, and ...’ ‘Thank heaven, your name has never been uttered,’ interposed Myles, hastily. ‘And your brother, who had once before sent him away when he tried to annoy me at the library, went to make him promise to behave himself, and he would not. Was not that it? So he flogged him.’ ‘Eh--Myles!’ said Mary, with a long-drawn intonation, compounded of incredulity, pride, and pleasure. ‘Eh--h--Myles! I niver did--no niver!’ ‘So it were you, Myles,’ said Edmund. ‘Thou hast kept some and quiet about it. But I’m glad thou did it.’ ‘And he has never come near my home--never given me a chance of thanking him,’ pursued Adrienne. ‘You must understand, now, why I have come.’ ‘Ay, I can so,’ said Mary, regarding her with great favour and cordiality, for this praise of Myles touched her to the very heart. ‘Won’t you sit down?’ she added. ‘I don’t wish to disturb you,’ said Adrienne, hesitating. ‘Eh, no sich thing. Sit you down,’ said Mary, drawing up the rocking-chair, in which Adrienne sat down, and Myles stood leaning against one end of the mantelpiece, feeling the need of a support of some kind; for he felt a sort of intoxication and a bewilderment, and a strange, subtle, new life in the very fact of Adrienne’s presence.