They came at last to a little sheltered glade close to the little river, with its golden brown water. There was a beautiful barberry growing in a corner, which Margaret had caught sight of. She wanted a branch of it to put in her hat, she said--until she remembered that her hat was covered with crape. But Randal was cutting the scarlet grapes before that evident incongruity had occurred to her. She sat alone upon a bit of the broken wall close by, among ferns and ivy, and watched him. “Oh,” she said, “I am so sorry I have given you the trouble. I forgot that it was crape I was wearing. It is very strange that one should ever be able to forget.” “But you are--by moments.” “Yes; it shows how little one knows. I thought I would die.” “But that could not be,” said Randal, kindly. “The world would come to an end very quickly if grief killed; but it does not, even the most terrible.” “And you will think mine was not like that,” said Margaret. “But I do not forget him! oh, I do not forget him! only-- I do not know how it is--my mind will not keep to one thing. I suppose,” she said, with a deep sigh, “it is because I have not very much mind at all.” “Nay, you accuse yourself unjustly,” he said, with a half smile; “after the shock of a great event, a great trouble, there comes a time of quiet--” “Oh!” she said, finding herself, by no doing of hers, brought to the point she desired, and turning to him with a sudden start, “Randal, I would like to tell you something. I thought I should have told them all _that_ night when I came in, but I had not the courage.” “What is it?” Randal threw a twig of his barberries into the stream and watched it carried along, tossing on the swift current. She was going to speak to him of her love, the poor child; and his heart revolted against such a confidence. He could not look at her. Girls receive the confidences of men with interest, but it is very seldom indeed that a young man plays the same part to a girl. “When I came in _that_ night you all thought my heart was breaking because I was going away, and I did not dare to say otherwise. But oh, Randal! it was not _that_!” “I understand.” He threw in another branch of the barberries and watched it intently, turning his head away from her. “It was another kind of parting that made you cry; you were thinking of--” “Oh, I was thinking--how glad, how glad I would be just to get away, only to get away!” “Margaret!” he turned round and looked at her quickly now. She was not embarrassed nor blushing, as if the words could bear some happier meaning, but quite pale and serious, looking at the water as he had been doing. Though he had known her all her life, he had of late given up calling her by her Christian name. It was the surprise that forced it from his lips.