"You'm travelling fast," she answered; "long rides, an' mended speech, an' what else? She finds you're fair to see--'tis natural. Yet 'twill dash this crack-brained foolery when you know what you crave to know. For years I've kept that secret, hoping there was money hanging to it. But I don't see none." "'Tis your duty to tell me now that I am a man." "As to that-- Do she want to know, or do you?" "We both--at least----" She caught him up. "Ho-ho! An' what be you to her that she should care a rush who your faither was?" "Well--a secret understanding----" "Unknown to her faither?" "'Tis so, but for God's sake, grandmother----" "Say it out, then, or I'll peach. Come now----" "Will you swear before heaven to tell nobody--not a breath to any living soul?" "I'll swear hard and fast--may my liver rot if I whimper it," said Lovey, already speculating what the lad's confession might be worth to Maurice Malherb. "And you'll tell me my father's name?" "As to that, yes. We'm prone to hunger after more truth than's pleasant to taste. An' what you want to know won't make you more light-hearted, nor yet that maiden, if she's been so daft as to turn her eyes to you. Your mother was my daughter Jane. Your faither was Norrington Malherb, the younger brother of Maurice Malherb, as died long since. So you stand cousin, wrong side the blanket, to that girl." She watched his face grow pale and heard him groan. "Only his faither, my old master, knowed, and that was why he paid me anything at all--cussed miser that he was. You wince, as if I'd thrashed 'e like I did when you was a boy. You'd better have bided ignorant." "No, by God!" he swore. "'Twas right that I should know. My only grief is that you hid it so long. 'Twill break her heart." Lovey jeered. "If that's all your trouble, you can laugh again. Maids as ban't hardly growed to see their bosoms rounded don't break their hearts for men. You tell her, an' she'll find it very easy to forget you." "She has promised to be my wife!" "My stars! The moonshiney madness there is in children!" "She loves me--she always will. We can't be more than mistress and man now. But she'll never think no worse of me; for this is no fault of mine." Lovey Lee did not answer, but her mind worked busily. She was wondering whether she might be able to pluck profit out of this folly. "You'm a proper man--none can gainsay it. Have 'e the pluck of a man? A church service an' the mumbo-jumbo of the parsons never yet kept the rickets out of a weakly babe, nor made the child of healthy folks more fair to see. Cuss the world, as must needs drag God A'mighty in by the ears to their twopenny-ha'penny plans an' plots an' marryings! Nature's made you a fine, shapely mate for any female. Maybe this wench----"