Involuntarily she clasped her hands upon her bosom and looked away into the blue summer sky.

Did he love her?
She had never asked him that, and all at once she felt a longing to hasten after him and utter the question.

Would he know what she meant?
Was it the instantaneous reward for having conscientiously striven to honour him?
That there should be love on his side had not hitherto seemed of so much importance; probably she had taken it for granted; she had been so preoccupied with her own duties.

Yet now it had all at once become of moment that she should know.

'Be a good girl.' She repeated the words over and over again, and made much of them.