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“Oh, he shouldn’t. He shouldn’t!” Doris said.

She stood on the threshold of a sunny room that overlooked the garden with its hedge of lavender and beyond it the orchard with its wealth of ripe apples shining in the sun. The room had been evidently furnished for her especial use. There was a couch in one corner, a cottage piano in another, and a writing-table near the window.

“The old master bought those things for his bride,” said Granny Grimshaw. “They are just as good as new yet, and Master Jeff has had the piano put in order for you. I expect you know how to play the piano, my dear?”

Doris went forward into the room. The tears were not far from her eyes. “He is too good to me. He is much too good,” she said.

“Ah, my dear, and you’ll be good to him too, won’t you?” said Granny Grimshaw coaxingly.

“I’ll do my best,” said Doris quietly.

She went down to Jeff in the stable-yard a little later with a heart brimming with gratitude, but that strange, new shyness was with her also. She did not know how to give him her thanks.

He was waiting for her, and escorted her across to the stable. “You will like to see your mount,” he said, cutting her short almost before she had begun.

She followed him into the stable. Jeff’s own mare poked an inquiring nose over the door of her loose-box. Doris stopped to fondle her. Jeff plunged a hand into his pocket and brought out some sugar.

From the stall next to them came a low whinny. Doris, in the act of feeding the mare, looked up sharply. The next moment with a little cry she had sprung forward and was in the stall with her arms around the neck of its occupant–a big bay, who nozzled against her shoulder with evident pleasure.

“Oh, Hector! Hector!” she cried. “However did you come here?”

“I bought him,” said Jeff, “as a wedding present.”

“For me? Oh, Jeff!” She left Hector and came to him with both hands outstretched. “Oh, Jeff, I don’t know how to thank you. You are so much too good. What can I say?”

He took the hands and gripped them. His dark eyes looked straight and hard into hers, and a little tremor went through her. She lowered her own instinctively, and in the same instant he let her go. He did not utter a word, and she turned from him in silence with a face on fire.

She made no further effort to express her gratitude.

CHAPTER VII

THE END OF THE PICNIC

Those odd silences of Jeff’s fell very often throughout the day, and they lay upon Doris’s spirit like a physical weight. They rode through autumn woodlands, and picnicked on the side of a hill. The day was warm and sunny, and the whole world shone as through a pearly veil. There were blackberries in abundance, large and ripe, and Doris wandered about picking them during the afternoon while Jeff lounged against a tree and smoked.

He did not offer to join her, but she had a feeling that his eyes followed her wherever she went, and a great restlessness kept her moving. She could not feel at her ease in his vicinity. She wanted very urgently to secure his friendship. She had counted upon that day in his society to do so. But it seemed to be his resolve to hold aloof. He seemed disinclined to commit himself to anything approaching intimacy, and that attitude of his filled her with misgiving. Had he begun to repent of the one-sided bargain, she asked herself? Or could it be that he also was oppressed by shyness? She longed intensely to know.

The sun was sinking low in the sky when at length reluctantly she went back to him. “It’s getting late,” she said. “Don’t you think we ought to go home?”

He was standing in the level sun-rays gazing sombrely down into the valley from which already the mists were beginning to rise.