“Yes.”
“Well, there is a legend about that which you should hear. Any old crone in the valley will do it ample justice.”
“I should prefer to hear it from a fairy on the hill,” said Redmond gallantly.
“Pas des compliments, although yours was nearly French.”
“You beat me at my own weapons,” laughed Redmond. “But whose palatial residence is that right over in the cleft between those two hills?”
The fire lighted up in the young girl’s eye, the delicate nostril expanded, the rich, ripe lips quivered, as she proudly replied: “That is my home.”
Her home—the nest in which she had been nurtured. What a precious flower in that gloomy valley! What a world of love and joy and beauty in that lone and sequestered spot!
“I envy you,” murmured Phil. “The tranquil loveliness of your home is—” he was going to send the words from his heart to his lips, but luckily they encountered Prudence upon the road, and altered themselves to suit that cold, passionless, interfering busybody—“is—just as it ought to be. You have made no vow to leave this valley?” he added.
“No, but I have often thought it.”
“Such a determination would be a calamity, Miss O’Byrne.”