She spoke no word, but the hand resting in his entwined his fingers in an answering pressure. “Dare I then ask so much?” cried he. And as if the ambiguity which had marked his speech were not enough, he must needs, as he put this question, bend in his eagerness towards her until her brown tresses touched his swart cheek. Was it then strange that the eagerness wherewith he urged another's suit should have been by her interpreted as her heart would have had it? She set her hands upon his shoulders, and meeting his eager gaze with the frank glance of the maid who, out of trust, is fearless in her surrender: “Throughout my life I shall thank God that you have dared it,” she made answer softly. A strange reply he deemed it, yet, pondering, he took her meaning to be that since Jocelyn had lacked the courage to woo boldly, she was glad that he had sent an ambassador less timid. A pause followed, and for a spell they sat silent, he thinking of how to frame his next words; she happy and content to sit beside him without speech. She marvelled somewhat at the strangeness of his wooing, which was like unto no wooing her romancer's tales had told her of, but then she reflected how unlike he was to other men, and therein she saw the explanation. “I wish,” he mused, “that matters were easier; that it might be mine to boldly sue your hand from your father, but it may not be. Even had events not fallen out as they have done, it had been difficult; as it is, it is impossible.” Again his meaning was obscure, and when he spoke of suing for her hand from her father, he did not think of adding that he would have sued it for his son. “I have no father,” she replied. “This very day have I disowned him.” And observing the inquiry with which his eyes were of a sudden charged: “Would you have me own a thief, a murderer, my father?” she demanded, with a fierceness of defiant shame. “You know, then?” he ejaculated. “Yes,” she answered sorrowfully, “I know all there is to be known. I learnt it all this morning. All day have I pondered it in my shame to end in the resolve to leave Sheringham. I had intended going to London to my mother's sister. You are very opportunely come.” She smiled up at him through the tears that were glistening in her eyes. “You come even as I was despairing--nay, when already I had despaired.” Sir Crispin was no longer puzzled by the readiness of her acquiescence. Here was the explanation of it. Forced by the honesty of her pure soul to abandon the house of a father she knew at last for what he was, the refuge Crispin now offered her was very welcome. She had determined before he came to quit Castle Marleigh, and timely indeed was his offer of the means of escape from a life that was grown impossible. A great pity filled his heart. She was selling herself, he thought; accepting the proposal which, on his son's behalf, he made, and from which at any other season, he feared, she would have shrunk in detestation.