"I did not wish to anger him, my dear; he is my father," he said gently.

The colour died out of her face again and she nodded once or twice, and
a great pensiveness came down on her. He took her hand again softly, and
she did not resist.

"The only doubt," she said presently, as if she talked to herself, "is
whether you had best be gone at Easter, or stay and face it out."

"Yes," said Robin, with his dismay come fully to the birth.

Then she turned on him, full of a sudden tenderness and compassion.

"Oh! my Robin," she cried, "and I have not said a word about you and
your own misery. I was thinking but of Christ's honour. You must forgive
me.... What must it be for you!... That it should be your father! You
are sure that he means it?"

"My father does not speak until he means it. He is always like that. He
asks counsel from no one. He thinks and he thinks, and then he speaks;
and it is finished."

She fell then to thinking again, her sweet lips compressed together, and
her eyes frightened and wondering, searching round the hanging above the
chimney-breast. (It presented Icarus in the chariot of the sun; and it
was said in Derby that it had come from my lord Abbot's lodging at
Bolton.)

Meantime Robin thought too. He was as wax in the hands of this girl, and
knew it, and loved that it should be so. Yet he could not help his