Laura looked up and laughed too, but without answering. Before there was time for that, she had seen the light of his smile die out, and the gloom settle down again. A sort of amazement seemed to be growing under his eyelids; his thought, whatever it was, had gradually returned upon him, and he was struck by it with a new surprise.
"Valentine!" she exclaimed.
"Yes," he answered steadily and gravely, and then roused himself to add, "Come out from under the shadow of this wall. The garden is all gloomy here in the morning; it makes me shiver. I want to speak to you," he continued, when they had passed through the door in the wall, and were walking on the lawn before the house.
"And I to you," she replied. "It was kind of you to ask us to come here."
"I suppose Mrs. Melcombe has decided to marry again," he began.
"Yes, but she would like to tell you about that herself."
"All right. I consider, Laura dear, that you have much more claim upon me than upon her."
"Do you, Valentine, do you?"
As they walked down into the orchard, Laura shed a few agitated tears; then she sat down on a grassy bank, and while Valentine, leaning against the trunk of a pear-tree, looked down upon her, she said—
"Then I wish you would help me, Valentine. The devotion that I have inspired, if I could only meet it as it deserves—" And then she went on in a tone of apology, "And it is only help that I want, for I have five hundred pounds of my own, if I could but get at it."