little Innocent--"

She looked up in his face and saw it quivering with suppressed
emotion, and the strange cold sense of aloofness that had numbed
her senses suddenly gave way like snow melting in the spring. In a
moment she was in his arms, weeping out her pent-up tears on his
breast, and he, stroking her soft hair, soothed her with every
tender and gentle word he could think of.

"There, there!" he murmured, fondly. "Thou must look at it in this
way, dear child! That if God deprived thee of one father he gave
thee another in his place! Make the best of that gift before it be
taken from thee!"




CHAPTER IV

There are still a few old houses left in rural England which are
as yet happily unmolested by the destroying ravages of modern
improvement, and Briar Farm was one of these. History and romance
alike had their share in its annals, and its title-deeds went back
to the autumnal days of 1581, when the Duke of Anjou came over
from France to England with a royal train of noblemen and
gentlemen in the hope to espouse the greatest monarch of all time,
"the most renowned and victorious" Queen Elizabeth, whose reign
has clearly demonstrated to the world how much more ably a clever
woman can rule a country than a clever man, if she is left to her
own instinctive wisdom and prescience. No king has ever been wiser