"From you? No: not unless I took it to hand on to your brother. It is an old score that you have brought up--one that lasted twenty years before it was settled. It is too late to stir up matters now." "It is not too late," she said earnestly. "It is never too late to try to undo a wrong." "The wrong was not yours; it must never touch you," he replied. "If my life was as clean as yours, it would, perhaps, not be too late for me either. Ten years ago I might have felt differently about it, but not now." He broke off hurriedly, and Maria, with a hopeless gesture, turned back into the path. "Then I shall appeal to your sisters when the time comes," she responded quietly. Catching the loose ends of her scarf, he drew her slowly around until she met his eyes. "And I have said nothing to you--to you," he began, in a constrained voice, which he tried in vain to steady, "because it is so hard to say anything and not say too much. This, at least, you must know--that I am your servant now and shall be all my life." She smiled sadly, looking down at the scarf which was crushed in his hands. "And yet you will not grant the wish of my heart," she said. "How could I? Put me back in the Hall, and I should be as ignorant and as coarse as I am out here. A labourer is all I am and all I am fit to be. I once had a rather bookish ambition, you know, but that is over--I wanted to read Greek and translate 'The Iliad' and all that--and yet to-day I doubt if I could write a decent letter to save my soul. It's partly my fault, of course, but you can't know you could never know--the abject bitterness and despair of those years when I tried to sink myself to the level of the brutes--tried to forget that I was any better than the oxen I drove. No, there's no pulling me up again; such things aren't lived over, and I'm down for good." Her tears, which she had held back, broke forth at his words, and he saw them fall upon her bosom, where her hands were still tightly clasped. "And it is all our fault," she said brokenly. "Not yours, surely." "It is not too late," she went on passionately, laying her hand upon his arm and looking up at him with a misty brightness. "Oh, if you would let me make amends--let me help you!" "Is there any help?" he asked, with his eyes on the hand upon his arm. "If you will let me, I will find it. We will take up your study where you broke it off--we will come up step by step, even to Homer, if you like. I am fond of books, you know, and I have had my fancy for Greek, too. Oh, it will be so easy--so easy; and when the time comes for you to go back to the Hall, I shall have made you the most learned Blake of the whole line." He bent quickly and kissed the hand which trembled on his sleeve. "Make of me what you please," he said; "I am at your service." For the second time he saw the wonderful light--the fervour-- illumine her face, and then fade slowly, leaving a still, soft radiance of expression.