mystery. He had thought of every thing, even to the amount of money
necessary.

"Have they no relations?" asked Richard, a little curiously. It seemed
to him that the squire's kindness was a trifle officious. However lowly
families might be, he believed that in trouble a noble independence
would make them draw together, just as birds that scatter wide in the
sunshine nestle up to each other in storm and cold. So he asked, "Have
they no relatives?"

"She has two brothers Ilkley way," said the squire, with a dubious
smile. "I nivver reckoned much on them."

"Don't you think she ought to send for them?"

"Nay, I don't. You're young, Richard, lad, and you'll know more some
day; but I'll tell you beforehand, if you iver hev a favor to ask,
ask it of any body but a relation--you may go to fifty, and not find
one at hes owt o' sort about 'em."

They talked for half an hour longer in a desultory fashion, as those
talk who are full of thoughts they do not share; and when they parted
Richard asked Elizabeth for a rose she had gathered as they walked
home together. He asked it distinctly, the beaming glance of his dark
eyes giving to the request a meaning she could not, and did not,
mistake. Yet she laid it in his hand, and as their eyes met, he knew
that as "there is a budding morrow in the midnight," so also there was
a budding love in the rose-gift.