’Bad! Oh Larry, I never, never thought, I never said you were bad. Far otherwise. I know that your heart is rich and deep and good. It is like the soil of your best meadows. But then, Larry, the best soil will grow the strongest weeds. Sometimes when I look through the gates of Chimsworthy I long to be within, with a hook reaping down and rooting up. And now I am peering through the gates of your honest eyes, and the same longing comes over me.’ He could see by the earnest expression of her face, by the twinkle of tears on her lashes, that she spoke out of the fulness of her heart. She was not praising him, she was rebuking him, yet he was not angry. He looked intently at her pure, beautiful face. She could not bear his gaze, he saw her weakness. He put his finger to her eyelashes. ’The dew is falling heavily, and has dropped some diamonds here,’ he said. She stood up. ’Hark!’ she said, and turned her head. ’The cuckoo clock in the kitchen is calling midnight. We need remain here no longer.’ ’I should like to remain till day,’ said Larry. ’What, to be scolded?’ ’To be told the truth, dear Honor.’ ’Do not forget what I have said. I spoke because I care for you. The sheep will not be disturbed to-night. Will you have some posset and go home?’ ’Your father will keep guard to-morrow night, but the night after that I will be here again. Oh Honor, you will sit up with me, will you not?’ He took her hand. ’How much better I had been, how the Chimsworthy coomb would have flowed with honey, had God given me such a sister as you.’ ’Well, begin to weed yourself and Chimsworthy,’ she said with a smile. ’Will you not give me a word of praise as well as of blame?’ ’When you deserve it.’ She pressed his hand, then withdrew it, entered the cottage, and fastened, the door. Hillary walked away with his gun over his shoulder, musing as he had not mused before. *CHAPTER XVII.* *MRS. VEALE.* Charles Luxmore had left the Revel shortly after the departure of his sisters. He returned to Langford covered with shame and full of anger. He was not ashamed of his rascality. He thought himself justified in playing a trick on tricksters. But he was ashamed at being conquered by his sister, and he was unable to disguise to himself that he cut an ignoble figure beside her. At the circus there had been a general recognition of her worth, and as general a disparagement of himself. Why had she interfered? He had courted a ’row’ in which he might have held his own against the equestrians, sure of support from the young Brattonians. That would have been sport, better than tumbling in the sawdust and skipping through hoops. If he could only have excited a fight, the occasion would have been forgotten in the results; he would have come out in flaming colours as a gallant fellow. Now, because Honor had interfered and put him in the wrong, he had been dismissed as a rogue.