kissed it tenderly. "Bless thee! No child of my own could be
dearer than thou art! All I want now is to leave thee in safe and
gentle keeping when I die. Think of this and be good to Robin!"

She trembled under his caress, and her heart was full of
speechless sorrow. She longed to yield to his wishes,--she knew
that if she did so she would give him happiness and greater
resignation to the death which confronted him; and she also knew
that if she could make up her mind to marry Robin Clifford she
would have the best and the tenderest of husbands. And Briar
Farm,--the beloved old home--would be hers!--her very own! Her
children would inherit it and play about the fair and fruitful
fields as she had done--they, too, could be taught to love the
memory of the old knight, the Sieur Amadis de Jocelin--ah!--but
surely it was the spirit of the Sieur Amadis himself that held her
back and prevented her from doing his name and memory grievous
wrong! She was not of his blood or race--she was nameless and
illegitimate,--no good could come of her engrafting herself like a
weed upon a branch of the old noble stock--the farm would cease to
prosper.

So she thought and so she felt, in her dreamy imaginative way, and
though she allowed old Hugo to leave her without vexing him by any
decided opposition to his plans, she was more than ever firmly
resolved to abide by her own interior sense of what was right and
fitting. She heard the wheels of the dog-cart grating the gravel
outside the garden gate, and an affectionate impulse moved her to
go and see her "Dad" off. As she made her appearance under the
rose-covered porch of the farm-house door, she perceived Landon,
who at once pulled off his cap with an elaborate and exaggerated