"I am not keeping you," she answered quietly. "You are unable to walk, but I have sent for the doctor, and he will bring help."
For a while he did not speak, but his eyes searched her face with a puzzled and baffled look.
"You are very pretty," he said at length. "But you are not Ruth."
"No; I am Dorothy Hamblyn," she answered.
He knitted his brows and looked at her intently, then he tried to shake his head.
"Hamblyn?" he questioned slowly. "I hate the Hamblyns--I hate the very name! All except the squire's little maid," and he closed his eyes, and was silent for several moments. Then he went on again--
"I wish I could hate the squire's little maid too, but I can't. I've tried hard, but I can't. She's so pretty, and she's to marry an old man, old enough to be her grandfather. Oh, it's a shame, for he'll break her heart. If I were only a rich man I'd steal her."
"Hush, hush!" she said quickly. "Do you know what you are saying?"
He opened his eyes slowly and looked at her again, but there was no clear light of recognition in them. For several minutes he talked incessantly on all sorts of subjects, but in the end he got back to the question that for the moment seemed to dominate all the rest.
"You can't be the squire's little maid," he said, "for she is going to marry an old man. Don't you think it is a sin?"
"I think it's a sin," he went on. "And if I were rich and strong I wouldn't allow it. I wish she were poor, and lived in a cottage; then I would work and work, and wait and hope, and--and----"
"We would fight the world together," he said, after a long pause.
She did not reply, but a mist came up before her eyes and blotted out the surrounding belt of trees, and the noise of the wind seemed to die suddenly away into silence, and a new world opened up before her--a land where springtime always dwelt, and beauty never grew old.
Ralph lay quite still, with his head upon her lap. He appeared to have relapsed into unconsciousness again.
She brushed her hand across her eyes at length and looked at him, and as she did so her heart fluttered strangely and uncomfortably in her bosom. A curious spell seemed to be upon her. Her nerves thrilled with an altogether new sensation. She grew almost frightened, and yet she had no desire to break the spell; the pleasure infinitely exceeded the pain.