‘I would you would take me there,’ she whispered at the end. ‘What! you would dare?’ he asked, amazed. ‘With you to fend me.’ Here was a quandary. He could not afford to show the lesser moral courage; and yet---- ‘We should be seen,’ he said. ‘O!’ she answered resignedly. ‘Very well.’ ‘Unless I could devise a plan,’ he added, stung by her tone. ‘Will you, Brion?’ she asked eagerly; and he took his first lesson in woman’s incomprehensibility. ‘Leave it to me,’ he said, frowning. ‘Yet I marvel at your wish to return where you suffered such rudeness.’ ‘Did you take me for the poor maid’s ghost? I wonder would _she_ have laughed to have her chin so tickled.’ ‘Hush!’ said Brion, horrified. ‘It is not good to talk of the unhallowed dead so lightly.’ The girl assumed a gravity. ‘I will not, then. Yet be sure I feared you more than any sucking-bear or cockatricks.’ His solemnity broke in a sputter of laughter. ‘O, Joan!’ he cried. ‘What have I said?’ ‘Did you mean succuba and cockatrice?’ ‘Well, if I did? Whatever they may be, they could not have behaved worse than you did.’ ‘Joan, you are a sweet dear.’ ‘Brion, I hoped we should meet to-day: that is the truth. Did you come a-fishing?’ ‘Yes, for love. I did not need a rod for that.’ ‘No, the rod comes after.’ ‘I prithee talk not so. It is not natural, I am sure, to your lips.’ ‘Well, I will not,’ She leaned towards him irresistibly, and he stole an arm about hers. It was all quite natural, harmless, and pretty. ‘Now tell me of yourself,’ she said, ‘and why you are unhappy.’ He gave her his story--after a little thought--concealing nothing from her. His rather staid reserve yielded to this endearing comrade as it had never done to any other in his life before. And she listened in silence, making no comment until he had finished. Then she said, her eyes fixed reflectively on his:-- ‘I much marvel who the pale lady was?’ It was that incident which had dwelt in her mind above the rest. Why? Because of the intuitive woman in her, conscious and suspectful. ‘Some chance stranger,’ answered Brion. ‘Yes,’ she responded, but without conviction, and sat quiet a little while, looking in his face and abstractedly stroking his sleeve. ‘Brion,’ she said suddenly, ‘what is a bustard?’ ‘Why, a bird,’ answered the boy, somewhat surprised. ‘O!’ she said. ‘But I don’t see--quite--you can’t be a bird.’ ‘_I!_’ ‘Sir John--I heard him once--called you the Bagott bustard.’ ‘Called _me_?’ he exclaimed, confounded. ‘Why should he speak of me at all? He does not know me, nor I him.’ ‘O! he knows about you--and about your Uncle, too. I tell you all the people on the moors know about one another.’ ‘Well, what have they--what has Sir John to say against my Uncle?’ ‘Why _against_, Brion? That was not my word.’ ‘But it should have been. I see that plain enough.’