She looked up at him startled.

"Who I am?" she repeated,--then as she saw the stern expression on
his face a sudden sense of fear ran through her nerves like the
chill of an icy wind and she waited dumbly for his next word. He
gripped her hand hard in his own.

"Now hear me out, child!" he said--"Let me speak on without
interruption, or I shall never get through the tale. Perhaps I
ought to have told you before, but I've put it off and put it off,
thinking 'twould be time enough when you and Robin were wed. You
and Robin--you and Robin!--your marriage bells have rung through
my brain many and many a night for the past two years and never a
bit nearer are you to the end of your wooing, such fanciful
children as you both are! And you're so long about it and I've so
short a time before me that I've made up my mind it's best to let
you have all the truth about yourself before anything happens to
me. All the truth about yourself--as far as I know it."

He paused again. She was perfectly silent. She trembled a little--
wondering what she was going to hear. It must be something
dreadful, she thought,--something for which she was unprepared,--
something that might, perhaps, like a sudden change in the
currents of the air, create darkness where there had been
sunshine, storm instead of calm. His grip on her hand was strong
enough to hurt her, but she was not conscious of it. She only
wished he would tell her the worst at once and quickly. The
worst,--for she instinctively felt there was no best.

"It was eighteen years ago this very haymaking time," he went on,