“I will tell you where they were some day,” he said, wondering if all the time she knew. For as she talked and he looked at her the remembrance of her lips on his in that kiss he had taken on that morning at his gates had come back to him with shame. He had kissed her as if she had been a pretty dairymaid and he a king. Now his soul went out in longing to have her for his own, to kiss her as his queen, his wife. How had he dared to think of her in any other way? Her history, her mother, were as nothing to him in face of her loveliness that bewitched him. When at last his borrowed horse came to the door he rose reluctantly. “Till to-morrow. I must bring it back, you know,” he said, and at something in his eyes she flushed, ever so faintly. “Till to-morrow,” she echoed quietly. And he never imagined that she watched him out of sight as he rode away, her heart fairly plunging with rapture. CHAPTER XVII. THE SPINET. It was tea-time when Cristiane appeared again from her bedroom, where she had fled in her anger with Cylmer. She came straight to Ismay, where she sat in the drawing-room with her mother, and kissed her penitently. “I was horrid this morning,” she observed childishly. “But Miles was so stupid. You forgive me, don’t you?” “I haven’t any need”--smiling, for she could have had no greater service done to her. “But I had to go for a walk by myself this afternoon, and I got drenched.” “The rain came on slowly enough,” Cristiane laughed, listening for a minute to the driving flood that rustled at the windows. “But you are such a town person! You might have known it was coming.” “I had to go out. I couldn’t sleep last night. It was very funny”--with sudden animation--“perhaps you know something about it?” “What was funny?” Cristiane moved a little as Thomas arrived with the tea, and began to arrange the table close to the two girls. “Why--the music! I don’t suppose you were playing on the piano at two in the morning, were you? For some one was.” She looked at Cristiane with a little, puzzled frown. Then she started. Thomas, his face like ashes, had dropped the cream-jug; as he stood staring at the ruin she caught his eyes on her in beseeching warning. “I was asleep,” said Cristiane. “Oh, Thomas, never mind! There is plenty of cream, you needn’t look like that.” “Yes, miss! No, miss! I’m very sorry,” the old man said confusedly. “I will fetch some more.” “What did you say about a piano? You must have been dreaming.” “I suppose I was”--slowly. “But I thought I woke up and heard some one playing a queer tune on a piano. But, of course, it was a dream!” She finished quietly, for there was something in the old servant’s face to make her hold her tongue. “It is rather odd,” Cristiane said, as she carried Mrs. Trelane’s cup to her, “for Jessie had the same dream once, and Thomas nearly ate her for telling it. She is his daughter, you know.”