"Oh, it's only a letter from Adela Reefe," Lance answered. "Dennie De Vine brought it; he's just gone away again. Would you like to see it?"
The vatman was occupied at the other end of the shed. Jessie took the letter and glanced at it; then returned it to her lover, indifferently. "Deely seems to be quite contented," she observed. "When are you going to finish, Ned?"
"Finish? You mean what I'm doing here? Why, I can go with you now, if you want."
"I wish you would, then. I feel just like having a little walk and talk. You're going away so soon, it's only fair I should see something of you."
"I know that, dearest," said Lance, "and I'm afraid I've spent too much time over this business. It's only fair to me, too, that we should be together."
They sauntered away in company, and strolled through the woods. "I have been thinking," he told her, "that I ought to start in two or three days. But I must see Adela and Sylv first. I don't want to go North without knowing just how they seem up there, in their new life."
A change came over Jessie's manner. "You mustn't go!" she said, with sudden vehemence. "It isn't right, Ned."
"Not right, my dear. Why?" Lance bent his earnest, clean-cut features to look down at her more searchingly.
But Jessie lowered her eyes, and would not meet his glance. "Oh, I have watched you," she said, "and you are often talking with Dennie; you talk about that girl, I am sure. And now she is writing to you. Don't you think you have done enough for her, without going to see her?"
"Perhaps so," said Lance, his energetic mind arrested by a sudden discontent, and by a wonder as to whether he had unconsciously fallen into error. "But surely you don't allow yourself to be troubled about it, do you?"
"Why, no," Jessie answered. "It would be foolish to do that. Why should I? Only, it may be that you don't think what you're doing, Ned. She is not our _friend_, and she never can be. I have agreed that you should be her benefactor if you want to. But think how it might seem for you to go up there and call on her. Isn't it too much?"
"I will do as you think best, my dear," Lance assented.
"Thank you," said Jessie, at once growing radiant.
They passed on through the sun-flecked gallery of the spicy woods, chatting on various topics, and were outwardly quite content. But Lance could not banish the idea that he had been deprived of something which was his right; and Jessie, for her part, was not nearly so serene as she appeared to be. A subtle intuition had warned her that Lance was wrapped up in his care for Adela to an extent which he himself was not able to measure. The circumstance weighed upon her with increasing force; and many times at night she had been awakened by her own tears, only to fret out the solitary hours with vain questionings and attempts at reassurance. Her trouble seemed needless and absurd; but somehow Adela Reefe came flitting across her dreams, and even darkened her waking moments, like a shadow revived from the past, that had the power to blot out the vivid and sunny present.