"You will have to do many things you don't like before you say your _ave atque vale_," she remarked. "But you shall be permitted to carry your full share of the burden. I mean to let you give me some money, if you can afford it, and I'll spend it for you." "Charity itself couldn't be kinder," he asseverated. "And, luckily, I can afford it. But--" He was looking at her wistfully, and the old longing for sympathy, for the sympathy which has been quite to the bottom of the well where truth lies, was about to cry out against this riveting of the fetters of misunderstanding and false accusation. "But you would rather spend it yourself?" she broke in, fancying she had divined his thought. "That cannot be. The one condition on which I shall consent to help is the completest isolation for Nan. You must promise me you will not try to see her. I am hoping against hope that none of the Mountain View Avenue people will find out what you did last night." "Oh, confound their gossiping tongues!" he railed; adding hastily: "Not that I care so very much what they say, either." Ardea let her horse pick his way down to the wood road, and when they were approaching the Deer Trace gate: "You haven't promised yet, Tom; and you must, you know." "Not to see Nan? That's easy. I'll keep out of her way, if you can keep her out of mine. All I care is to know that she is comfortably provided for." This he said, thinking only of the boy-time obligation voluntarily assumed; but it was quite inevitable that Ardea should mistake the motive. "It is right and proper that you should care about that," she said judicially. And a little farther along she added: "But I don't like your attitude." "I don't like it myself," he rejoined heartily. "I never wanted so badly to say things in all my life! But you've nailed the lid on and I can't." "They are better unsaid," she returned quickly. "Will you take that for your cue in the future?" "Certainly; it is for you to command," he said lightly, swinging from his saddle to open the pasture gate for her; and so the morning ride came to its end. Since provincialism is by no means the exclusive distinction of the landward bred, there was an immediate restirring of the gossip pool when the story of Tom's befriending of Nancy Bryerson and her child got abroad in Gordonia and among the country colonists. In the comment of the simpler-minded Gordonia folk, the iron-master's son had finally "made it up" with Nancy, and here the note of approval was not wholly lacking. There were good-hearted souls to say that boys will be boys, and to express the hope that Tom would go on from this beginning and make an honest woman of Nancy by marrying her.