"And you'll tell me my father's name?"
"As to that, yes. We'm prone to hunger after more truth than's pleasant to taste. An' what you want to know won't make you more light-hearted, nor yet that maiden, if she's been so daft as to turn her eyes to you. Your mother was my daughter Jane. Your faither was Norrington Malherb, the younger brother of Maurice Malherb, as died long since. So you stand cousin, wrong side the blanket, to that girl."
She watched his face grow pale and heard him groan.
"Only his faither, my old master, knowed, and that was why he paid me anything at all—cussed miser that he was. You wince, as if I'd thrashed 'e like I did when you was a boy. You'd better have bided ignorant."
"No, by God!" he swore. "'Twas right that I should know. My only grief is that you hid it so long. 'Twill break her heart."
Lovey jeered.
"If that's all your trouble, you can laugh again. Maids as ban't hardly growed to see their bosoms rounded don't break their hearts for men. You tell her, an' she'll find it very easy to forget you."
"She has promised to be my wife!"
"My stars! The moonshiney madness there is in children!"
"She loves me—she always will. We can't be more than mistress and man now. But she'll never think no worse of me; for this is no fault of mine."