"I know nothing about it," he said kindly. "I have no foresight of any such time. I shall never do anything to bring it about, Rotha. Only, if it came by no doing of mine, I want you to have the knowledge of one or two things which might be a help to you. Do you understand?" She looked at him still silently, trying to read his face, as if her fate were there. He met the look as steadily. On one side, a keen, searching, suspicious, fearful inquiry; on the other a calm, frank, steadfastness; till his face broke into a smile. "Satisfied?" he asked. "Then why do you speak so, Mr. Digby?" she said with a quiver in her lip. "My child, this world is proverbially an uncertain and changing thing." "I know it; but why should you make it more uncertain by talking in that way?" "I do not. I forestall nothing. I merely would like to have you provided with one or two bits of knowledge; a sort of note of the way, if you should need it. You are not superstitious, are you?" "I do not know what is superstitious," said Rotha, her eyes still fixed upon his face with an intentness which moved him, while yet at the same time, he saw, she was swallowing down a great deal of disturbance. "Well," he said, speaking very easily, "it is superstition, when people think that anything beneath the Creator has power to govern the world he has made--or to govern any part of it." "I was not thinking of the government of the world," said Rotha, "Only of a very small part of it,--the affairs of your little life. You were afraid that being prepared for trouble might bring the trouble, in some mysterious way?" The girl was silent, and her eyes fell to the hand which held hers. What would she do, if ever that hand ceased to be her protection? People of Rotha's temperament receive impressions easily, and to her fancy that hand was an epitome of the whole character to which it belonged. Delicately membered, and yet nervously and muscularly strong; kept in a perfection of care, and graceful as it was firm in movement; yet ready, she knew, to plunge itself into anything where human want or human trouble called for its help. Rotha loved the touch of it, obeyed every sign of it, and admired every action of it; and now as she looked, two big, hot tears fell down over her cheeks. The hand closed a little more firmly upon her fingers. "Rotha--you believe me?" he said. "What, Mr. Digby?" "You believe me when I tell you, that I am never going to leave you or lose you by any will or doing of mine--" "By whose then?" said Rotha quickly. "By nobody's else, either, I promise you--unless by your own." "By mine!" said Rotha, and a faint smile broke upon her troubled face.