“You need not disturb yourself, mother dear. It is nothing of any importance to me, though to other people it might be. And that is the reason why I kept it to myself.”
“Oh, we shall come to something by-and-by! One would really think you were older than your mother. Now, miss, if you please, let us judge of your discretion. What is it that you have been hiding so long?”
Mary's face grew crimson now, but with anger rather than with shame; she had never thought twice about Robin Lyth with anything warmer than pity, but this was the very way to drive her into dwelling in a mischievous manner upon him.
“What I have been hiding,” she said, most distinctly, and steadfastly looking at her mother, “is only that I have had two talks with the great free-trader Robin Lyth.”
“That arrant smuggler! That leader of all outlaws! You have been meeting him on the sly!”
“Certainly not. But I met him once by chance; and then, as a matter of business, I was forced to meet him again, dear mother.”
“These things are too much for me,” Mrs. Anerley said, decisively. “When matters have come to such a pass, I must beg your dear father to see to them.”
“Very well, mother; I would rather have it so. May I go now and make an end of my gardening?”
“Certainly—as soon as you have made an end of me, as you must quite have laid your plans to do. I have seen too much to be astonished any more. But to think that a child of mine, my one and only daughter, who looks as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, should be hand in glove with the wickedest smuggler of the age, the rogue everybody shoots at—but can not hit him, because he was born to be hanged—-the by-name, the by-word, the by-blow, Robin Lyth!” Mrs. Anerley covered her face with both hands.
“How would you like your own second cousin,” said Mary, plucking up her spirit, “your own second cousin, Mistress Cockscroft, to hear you speak so of the man that supports them at the risk of his life, every hour of it? He may be doing wrong—it is not for me to say—but he does it very well, and he does it nobly. And what did you show me in your drawer, dear mother? And what did you wear when that very cruel man, Captain Carroway, came here to dine on Sunday?”