"You must be crazy to have thoughts o' that sort, George," she said. "Ain't I been your wife for five years, and isn't it likely that ef I had a secret you'd have discovered it, sharp feller as you are? No, I was pleased to see Squire. I was always fond o' 'im; and I ain't got no secret except the pain in my side."
She turned very pale as she uttered the last words and pressed her hand to the neighborhood of her heart.
Vincent was at once all tenderness and concern.
"I'm a brute to worry yer, my little gell," he said. "Secret or no secret, you're all I 'as got. It's jest this way, Het, ef you'd love me a bit, I wouldn't mind ef you had fifty secrets, but it's the feelin' that you don't love me, mad as I be about you, that drives me stark, staring wild at times."
"I'll try hard to love you ef you wish it, George," she said.
He left his seat and came toward her. The next moment he had folded her in his arms. She shivered under his embrace, but submitted.
"Now that's better," he said. "Tryin' means succeeding 'cording to my way o' thinking of it. But you don't look a bit well, Het; you change color too often—red one minute, white the next—you mustn't do no sort o' work this morning. You jest put your feet up this minute on the settle and I'll fetch that novel you're so took up with. You like readin', don't yer, lass?"
"At times I do," said Hetty, "but I ain't in the mood to read to-day, and there's a heap to be done."
"You're not to do it; Susan will manage."
"George, she can't; she's got the dairy."