"Why, pretend that we're engaged—just to satisfy him. Couldn't you make things easy for me that way?"
"I don't quite understand," he said, with a puzzled air—"How would it make things easy?"
"Why, don't you see?" and she spoke with hurried eagerness—"When he comes home to-night let him think it's all right—and then—then I'll run away by myself—and it will be my fault—"
"Innocent! What are you talking about?"—and he flushed with vexation. "My dear girl, if you dislike me so much that you would rather run away than marry me, I won't say another word about it. I'll manage to smooth things over with my uncle for the present—just to prevent his fretting himself—and you shall not be worried—"
"You must not be worried either," she said. "You will not understand, and you do not think!—but just suppose it possible that, after all, my own parents did remember me at last and came to look after me—and that they were perhaps dreadful wicked people—"
Robin smiled.
"The man who brought you here was a gentleman," he said—"Uncle Hugo told me so this morning, and said he was the finest-looking man he had ever seen."
Innocent was silent a moment.
"You think he was a 'gentleman' to desert his own child?" she asked.
Robin hesitated.