"If I go, wilt thou come up after supper to see me?"
"If I can be spared."
"Nay, no ifs—ay or no?"
Father Mohl smiled, and his smile was not good to see.
"Is this the flower of that confidence through love which you so much admire, Sir Christopher?"
"No," answered Neville, "only the thorns on its stem; the blossoms are not yet out."
"Ay or no?" repeated the child, oblivious of the discussion going on around him.
"Oh, ay, and get thee gone!" cried his mother, thoroughly out of patience with the child and herself and every one else.
Cecil ran round to her seat, hugged her in a stifling embrace, and then pattered out of the room and up the stair, reassuring his timid little heart by saying aloud as he went, "Bearth come not into houtheth! Bearth come not into houtheth!"
Father Mohl sat with bent head, the enigmatic smile still playing round his lips. At length, making the sign of the cross, he spoke aside to Father White,—