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 died slowly. It's still standing. . . the big white church with the spire, on High Street. It's only a museum now."

Jean laughed. "Then we're not so far apart, after all. It's almost as if we were related."

"Yes, because a Pentland did marry a Milford once, a long time ago . . . more than a hundred years, I suppose."

The discovery made her happy in a vague way, perhaps because she knew it made him seem less what they called an "outsider" at Pentlands. It wouldn't be so hard to say to her father, "I want to marry Jean de Cyon. You know his ancestors came from Durham." The name of Milford would make an impression upon a man like her father, who made a religion of names; but, then, Jean had not even asked her to marry him yet. For some reason he had kept silent, saying nothing of marriage, and the silence clouded her happiness at being near him.

"It's odd," said Jean, suddenly absorbed, in the way of men, over this concrete business of ancestry. "Some of these Milfords must be direct ancestors of mine and I've no idea which ones they are."

"When we go down the hill," she said, "I'll take you to the meeting-house and show you the tablet that records the departure of the Reverend Josiah Milford and his congregation."

She answered him almost without thinking what she was saying, disappointed suddenly that the discovery should have broken in upon the perfection of the mood that united them a little while before.

They found a grassy spot sheltered from the August sun by the leaves of a stunted wild-cherry tree, all twisted by the sea winds, and there Sybil seated herself to open their basket and spread the lunch—the chicken, the crisp sandwiches, the