"Not to mintion the castle," remarked Barney.
"Just a ruin in a bit of a potato patch," Scarlett hastened to apologize for his ancestral glories.
"And a cow to chaperon it—God bless her!" Barney saluted respectfully, as he turned to go.
Sir Gerald looked down on his lady-love with laughing eyes.
"My offence is rank," he quoted.
"Oh, it's not an unpardonable sin," Evelyn assured him, also laughing, but confused. "What a goose you must have thought me all this time—the way I have condescended to you!"
"The greater my triumph in winning you on my own recognizances," he replied.
Evelyn held him at arms' length, contemplatively. "What a difference," she remarked, "between the myself of to-day and of a year ago! Then I should have suspected myself of being influenced by this—but now nothing seems to matter so much as that we care for each other."
"Miss Durant! O Miss Durant!" The lovers broke apart as, by a cross-cut through the bushes, the minister came hurrying toward them. "Here is—some one who brings you news of your father."
He pointed to an elderly man who, with lagging footstep, followed him.