Luke airily swung his stick. “It all rests with you, child. Though _we_ can’t marry, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t go on seeing each other, as we do now, forever and ever,--as long as you help me in this affair. But if you’re going to sulk and talk this nonsense about ‘hating’--it is probable that it will be a case of good-bye!” The fair girl’s face was distorted by a spasmodic convulsion of conflicting emotions. She bit her lip and hung her head. Presently she looked up again and flung her arms round his neck. “I’ll do anything you ask me, Luke, anything, as long as you don’t turn against me.” They walked along for some time in silence, hand in hand, taking care not to lose sight of their two companions who seemed as engrossed as themselves in one another’s society. James Andersen was showing sufficient discretion in avoiding the more frequented foot-paths. “Luke,” began the girl at last, “did you really give my ring to Annie Santon?” Luke’s brow clouded in a moment. “Damn your ring!” he cried harshly. “I’ve got other things to think about now than your confounded rings. When people give me presents of that kind,” he added “I take for granted I can do what I like with them.” Gladys trembled and looked pitifully into his face. “But that girl said,” she murmured--“that factory girl, I mean--that it had been lost in some way; hidden, she said, in some hole in a stone. I can’t believe that you would let me be made a laughing-stock of, Luke dear?” “Oh, don’t worry me about that,” replied the stone-carver. “May-be it is so, may-be it isn’t so; anyway it doesn’t matter a hang.” “She said too,” pleaded Gladys in a hesitating voice, “that you and Annie were going to be married.” “Ho! ho!” laughed Luke, fumbling with some tightly tied hurdles that barred their way; “so she said that, did she? She _must_ have had her knife into you, our little Phyllis. Well, and what’s to stop me if I did decide to marry Annie?” Gladys gasped and looked at him with a drawn and haggard face. Her beauty was of the kind that required the flush of buoyant spirits to illuminate it. The more her heart ached, the less attractive she became. She was anything but beautiful now; and, as he looked at her, Luke noticed for the first time, how low her hair grew upon her forehead. “You wouldn’t think of doing that?” she whispered, in a tone of supplication. He laughed lightly and lifting up her chin made as though he were going to kiss her, but drew back without doing so. “Are you going to be good,” he said, “and help me to get Lacrima for James?” She threw her arms round him. “I’ll do anything you like--anything,” she repeated, “if you’ll only let me love you!”