It was still early, and Stanton, so easy-going and leisurely a house, was not yet astir when Geoff got home. Hours of sunshine and morning light are over even in August before seven o’clock, which was the earliest hour at which Lady Stanton’s servants, who were all “so kind” to her, began to stir. They kept earlier hours at Penninghame, where Geoff managed to get a dog-cart, with an inquisitive driver, who recognised, and would fain have discovered what brought him from home at that hour. The young man, however, first took leave of his little companion, whom he deposited safely at the door of the old hall, which was already open, and where they parted with mutual vows of reliance and faith in each other. These vows, however, were not exchanged by the hall-gate, but in a shady corner of the Chase, where the two young creatures paused for a moment. “You will trust me that I will do everything for him, as if he had been my own father?” said Geoff. Lilias, over whom some doubts had begun to steal, faltered a little, and replied with some hesitation: “I would rather it was me; I would rather find out everything, and bring him home,” she said. “But, Lily, what could you do? while you see I know a great deal already,” Geoff said. Now that he was about to vanish out of her sight the bargain began to feel less satisfactory to the little woman, who was thus condemned, as so many grown women have been, to wait indefinitely for the action of another, in a matter so deeply interesting to herself. Lilias looked at him wistfully, with an anxious curve over her eyebrows, and a quiver in her mouth. The tension of suspense had begun for her, which is one of the hardest burdens of a woman. Oh, if she could but have gone herself, not waiting for any one, to the old woman on the hill! It was true the mountains were very lonely, and the relief of meeting Geoff had been intense; and though she had not gone half way, or nearly so much, her limbs were aching with the unusual distance; but yet to be tired, and lonely, and frightened is nothing, as Lilias felt, to this waiting, which might never come to an end. And already the ease and comfort and sudden relief with which she had leant upon Geoff’s understanding and sympathy, had evaporated a little, leaving behind only the strange story about her father, the sudden discovery of trouble and sorrow which had startled her almost into womanhood out of childhood. She looked up into Geoff’s face very wistfully--very anxiously; her eyes dilated, and gleaming with that curve over them which once indented in young brows so seldom altogether disappears again. “Oh, Mr. Geoff!” she said, “but papa--is not your papa: and you will perhaps have other things to do: or--perhaps--you will forget. But me, I shall be always thinking, I shall never forget,” said the little girl.