Loving and loved, no thought came to them there of how they should see the mill-stream again.
"Leone, Lady Chandos." More than once that evening she said those words to herself. It was after eight when she came in, and the farmer had long finished his supper; he sat thinking over his pipe.
"You are late, my lady lass," he said; "sit down and talk to me before I go to rest."
Obediently enough, she sat down while he told her the history of his visits to the different markets. She heard, but did not take in the sense of one single word he uttered. She was saying to herself over and over again, that by this time to-morrow she should be Lady Chandos. Her happiness would have been complete if she could have told her uncle. He had been so kind to her. They were opposite as light and darkness, they had not one idea in common, yet he had been good to her and she loved him. She longed to tell him of her coming happiness and grandeur, but she did not dare to break her word.
Robert Noel looked up in wonder. There was his beautiful niece kneeling at his feet, her eyes dim with tears.
"Uncle," she was saying, "look at me, listen to me. I want to thank you. I want you always to remember that on this night I knelt at your feet and thanked you with a grateful heart for all you have ever done for me."
"Why, my lady lass," he replied, "you have always been to me as a child of my own," he replied.
"A tiresome child," she said, half laughing, half crying. "See. I take this dear, brown hand, so hard with work, and I kiss it, uncle, and thank you from my heart."
He could not recover himself, so to speak. He looked at her in blank, wordless amazement.
"In the years to come," she continued, "when you think of me, you must say to yourself, that, no matter what I did, I loved you."