Of concealment the face was entirely ignorant; no bird of the forest in which she lived could be more frank, innocent of guile, and ignorant of evil.
With her light summer cloak held round her graceful figure, she stood in the doorway, a picture of grace and youthful beauty.
For a moment she stood silent, looking from the woodman to his wife questioningly, then she came into the room and threw the hood back, revealing a shapely head, shining, bronze-like, in the light of the lamp.
“Did you send Dick for me, father?” she said, and her voice, like her face, betokened a refinement uncommon in a woodman’s daughter. “I was not far off, only at the pool to hear the frogs’ concert. Dick knows where to find me now, he comes straight to the pond, though he hates frogs’ music; don’t you, Dick?”
The dog rubbed his nose against her hand and wagged his tail, and the girl took her seat at the table.
To match face and voice, her mien and movements were graceful, and she handled the dinner-napkin like—a lady. It was just that, expressed in a word. The girl was not only beautiful—but a lady, in appearance, in tone, in bearing—and that, notwithstanding she wore a plain cotton gown in a woodman’s hut, and called the woodman “father.”
“You did not come by your usual path, father,” she said, turning from the deerhound, who sat on his haunches and rested his nose in her lap, quite content if her hand touched his head, say once during the meal.
“No, Una,” he replied, and though he called her by her Christian name, and without any prefix there was a subtle undertone in his voice and in his manner of addressing her, which seemed to infer something like respect. “No, I went astray.”
“And you were late,” she said. “Was anything the matter?” she added, turning her eyes upon him, with, for the first time, an air of interrogation.
“Matter? No,” he said, raising himself and coming to the table. “What should be? Yes, I came home by another path, and I don’t think you must come to meet me after dark, Una,” he added, with affected carelessness.
“No?” she asked, looking from one to the other with a smile of surprise. “Why not? Do you think I should get lost, or have you seen any wolves in Warden Forest, father? I know every path from end to end, and wolves have left merry England forever.”
“Not quite,” said Gideon, absently.
“Yes, quite,” and she laughed. “What Saxon king was it who offered fivepence for every wolf’s head? We were reading about it the other night, don’t you remember?”
“Reading! you are always reading,” said the woman, as she put a smoking dish on the table, and speaking for the first time. “It’s books, books, from morn to night, and your father encourages you. The books will make thee old before thy time, child, and put no pence in thy father’s pocket.”
“Poor father!” she murmured, and leaning forward, put her arms round his neck. “I wish I could find in the poor, abused books the way to make him rich.”
Gideon had put up his rough hand to caress the white one nestling against his face, but he let his hand drop again and looked at her with a slight cloud on his brow.
“Rich! who wants to be rich? The word is on your lips full oft of late, Una. Do you want to be rich?”
“Sometimes,” she answered. “As much for your sake as mine. I should like to be rich enough for you to rest, and”—looking round the plainly furnished but comfortable room—“and a better house and clothes.”
“I am not weary,” he said, his eyes fixed on her with a thoughtful air of concealed scrutiny. “The cot is good enough for me, and the purple and fine linen I want none of. So much for me; now for yourself, Una?”
“For myself?” she said. “Well, sometimes I think, when I have been reading some of the books, that I should like to be rich and see the world.”
“It must be such a wonderful place! Not so wonderful as I think it, perhaps, and that’s just because I have never seen anything of it. Is it not strange that for all these years I have never been outside Warden?”
“Strange?” he echoed, reluctantly.
“Yes; are other girls so shut in and kept from seeing the world that one reads so pleasantly of?”
“Not all. It would be well for most of them if they were. It has been well for you. You have not been unhappy, Una?”
“Unhappy! No! How could one be unhappy in Warden? Why, it’s a world in itself, and full of friends. Every living thing in it seems a friend, and an old friend, too. How long have we lived in Warden, father?”
“Eighteen years.”
“And I am twenty-one. Mother told me yesterday. Where did we live before we came to Warden?”
“Don’t worry your father, Una,” said Mrs. Rolfe, who had been listening and looking from one to the other with ill-concealed anxiety; “he is too weary to talk.”
“Forgive me, father. It was thoughtless of me. I should have remembered that you have had a hard day, while I have been idling in the wood, and over my books; it was stupid of me to trouble you. Won’t you sit down again and—and I will promise not to talk.”
“Say no more, Una. It grieves me to think that you might not be content, that you were not happy; if you knew as much of the world that raves and writhes outside as I do, you would be all too thankful that you are out of the monster’s reach, and that all you know of it is from your books, which—Heaven forgive them—lie all too often! See now, here is something I found in Arkdale;” and as he spoke he drew from the capacious pocket of his velveteen jacket a small volume.
The girl sprang to her feet—not clumsily, but with infinite grace—and leaned over his shoulder eagerly.
“Why, father, it is the poems you promised me, and it was in your pocket all the while I was wearying you with my foolish questions.”
“Tut, tut! Take your book, child, and devour it, as usual.”
Once or twice Gideon looked up, roused from his reverie by the rustling of the trees as the gusts shook them, and suddenly the sky was rent by a flash of lightning and a peal of thunder, followed by the heavy rattle of the rainstorm.
“Hark at the night, father!” she said, raising her eyes from the book, but only for a moment.
“Ay, Una,” he said, “some of the old elms will fall to-night. Woodman Lightning strikes with a keen ax.”
Suddenly there came another sound which, coming in an interval of comparative quiet, caused Una to look up with surprise.
“Halloa there! open the door.”
Gideon sprang to his feet, his face pale with anger.
“Go to your room, Una,” he said.
She rose and moved across the room to obey, but before she had passed up the stairs the woodman had opened the door, and the voice came in from the outside, and she paused almost unconsciously.
“At last! What a time you have been! I’ve knocked loud enough to wake the dead. For Heaven’s sake, open the door and let me in. I’m drenched to the skin.”
“This is not an inn, young sir.”
“No, or it would soon come to ruin with such a landlord. It’s something with four walls and a roof, and I must be content with that. You don’t mean to say that you won’t let me come in?”
“I do not keep open house for travelers.”
“Oh, come,” exclaimed the young man, with a short laugh. “It’s your own fault that I am back here; you told me the wrong turning. I’ll swear I followed