And before she could answer he added:
"Do you know Miss Ingelow's poem 'Regret?'"
She answered in a low voice, with a deepening flush:
"Yes, I found it once in a book of mamma's, heavily underlined. It begins like this:
"'Oh, that word Regret!
There have been nights and morns when we have sighed,
Let us alone, Regret.'"
"Ugh! it gives me the dismals!" he groaned, and she paused diffidently.
That strange, throbbing silence fell again, and frightened her. It was like some mesmeric spell.
She cried out quickly:
"Let us go up to the house."
Her broad leghorn sun-hat lay on the grass and she stretched out her arm for it.