"Then you must know that I don't want the lass, and wouldn't take her at any price, though I don't care to say that."
"Perhaps you deny going to the gardener's cottage at all?"
"No, I don't. Why should I? If you were watching me, so much the better. I wish you had listened to every word I said to her; hating her as you do, it would have done you good, and set all this nonsense at rest."
"But you went?"
"Yes, I went."
"And—and—"
"And told her, then and there, that nothing should force me to wed her. She had set the old man and the young master to nagging me about it. Neither they nor she gave me an hour's peace."
"Oh, Richard! Richard! Is this true?"
"But for my love of you, I might have given in—"
"I don't care that for such love," cried the girl, tearing a leaf of ivy from a spray that had crept through the broken window, and dashing it to the floor. "I want you to love me better than all the world beside. No halving. I want that, and nothing else."