finished!--all finished with your Uncle Hugo!--and the doctors say
he can only live a year!"

Her grief was so touching and pathetic that Robin could not find
it in his heart to make a jest of the romance she had woven round
the old French knight whose history had almost passed into a
legend. After all, what she said was true--the line of the Jocelyn
family had been kept intact through three centuries till now--and
a direct heir had always inherited Briar Farm. He himself had
taken a certain pride in thinking that Uncle Hugo's "love-child,"
as he had believed her to be, was at any rate, love-child or no,
born of the Jocelyn blood--and that when he married her, as he
hoped and fully purposed to do, he would discard his own name of
Clifford and take that of Jocelyn, in order to keep the continuity
of associations unbroken as far as possible. All these ideas were
put to flight by Innocent's story, and, as the position became
more evident to him, the smiling expression on his face changed to
one of gravity.

"Dear Innocent," he said, at last--"Don't cry! It cuts me to the
heart! I would give my very life to save you from a sorrow--you
know I would! If you ever thought, as you say, that you could or
would marry me for the sake of the Sieur Amadis, you might just as
well marry me now, even though the Sieur Amadis is out of it. I
would make you so happy! I would indeed! And no one need ever know
that you are not really the lineal descendant of the Knight--"

She interrupted him.

"Priscilla knows," she said--"and, no matter how you look at it, I