“Justice on the poor, the tempted!” A sudden sense of the danger that her words held checked her. “Oh, why did you tell me? Why should I know you are helping to hunt any poor wretch down?” “Oh, the tender woman’s soul that cannot bear anything to be hurt!” he thought swiftly, loving her all the more for her weakness. “Would you let things go, and have the innocent suffer for the guilty?” he said gravely. “I think not, dear.” The innocent! Was there any one in the world innocent? She had no reason to love her mother, yet now, in her peril, she was ready to fight, tooth and nail, for her, even when her enemy was Miles Cylmer, whose kiss had opened heaven. All that he was doing she must know, and make of no avail, and at the task before her the girl’s brave spirit quailed. Somehow she must save her mother, and keep him! Her brain reeled as she thought that some one, no matter how innocent, must have that crime brought home to them to save the mother who was guilty. Ismay summoned all her strength, and sat up, very white. “Did you know I was such a baby?” she whispered. “I hate hearing of horrors, and it startled me to know you had anything to do with things like that. But you’re quite right. I won’t be so silly any more. Only I--I was ready to cry in any case. I loved you, and you kissed me, and----” “And then I had not any more sense than to blurt out things you should never hear of,” he finished for her, kissing her again, very softly. “I’m going to take you home now, and we’ll never speak of Abbotsford again.” “You can as much as you like, now,” and if her lips were wan he did not notice. “I know whatever you do will be for the right,” speaking the truth, but not adding, “no matter the cost to me and mine.” “My little sweetheart,” he said, fastening the fur collar of her coat, that he had unfastened to give her room to breathe when she lay unconscious. “I wish I could carry you home. You aren’t fit to walk.” “I am fit to go anywhere with you,” she smiled, with all the strange sorcery that was hers, a smile that covered deadly terror. “Bring my roses. They are the first thing you ever gave me,” pointing to the great bunch of blood-red flowers lying on the ground in the early twilight. “They are not half so sweet and fine as you,” Cylmer said, as he saw her put them to her face. “Do you know how beautiful you are? I wish you would marry me to-morrow, so that you could put away all that black, and let me see you in a white gown.” With a little shiver, she drew closer to him, where she walked within his arm in the sheltering dusk. “Tell me about Lord Abbotsford,” she said, as his arm tightened round her, for she must know; she dared not let him go back to talk of that love that might turn so bitter in the end. “And make you faint again? Not I!” “I won’t. It wasn’t that.” He could not know the sweet shyness of her voice was put there to cover the first lie she had ever told him. “I was--tired.”