"Issa!"
It seemed to him that he had shouted aloud; then he realized that he had not spoken at all. "Issa!" he said, again, and she turned towards him.
"This man; he is not known to you. How could it be?"
"Yet it is the truth, my father," answered the girl, steadily. "It is just a month ago that chance set us face to face—one day when I rode alone in the green drive."
"And thereafter?"
"Once he came to the walled garden, adventuring the thousand chances of discovery. Yet how he managed to cross the stockade-line I know not, for I was frightened, and begged him to leave me. And this he did most courteously, only swearing that he would again return."
"The third time?"
"That was the day—the day of the first May-bloom—the Ochre brook and the Doomsmen——" The girl's voice faltered.
"Yet never a word to me or to your mother?"
"It was not my secret," she answered, bravely; and upon that Quinton Edge himself took up the word.