The light wind caught her scarf, blowing the long ends about her head. From the frame of soft white lace her eyes looked dark and solemn and very distant.
"I had hoped that you had no other reason than kindness." He had lost entirely the rustic restraint he had once felt in her presence, and, as he stood there in his clothes of dull blue jean, it was easy to believe in the gallant generations at his back. Was the fret of their gay adventures in his blood? she wondered.
"You will see the kindness in my reason, I hope," she answered quietly, while the glow of her sudden resolution illumined her face, "and at least you will admit the justice—though belated."
He drew a step nearer. "And it concerns you—and me?" he asked.
"It concerns you—oh, yes, yes, and me also, though very slightly. I have just learned—just a moment ago—what you must have thought I knew all along."
As he fell back she saw that he paled slowly beneath his sunburn.
"You have just learned—what?" he demanded.
"The truth," she replied; "as much of the truth as one may learn in an hour: how it came that you are here and I am there—at the Hall."
"At the Hall?" he repeated, and there was relief in the quick breath he drew; "I had forgotten the Hall."
"Forgotten it? Why, I thought it was your dream, your longing, your one great memory."