"But who can it be, or have been? . . . That Dance woman, perhaps?
She was infatuated enough."
"It was not she," said Diana positively.
"Somebody can tell us. . . . That Mr. Silk, for instance."
"Ah, you too think of him?"
"As a clergyman—and to some extent a boon companion of Oliver's—he would be likely to know—"
"—And to tell? You are quite right, mamma: I have asked him."
Chapter XI.
THE ESPIAL.
Ruth Josselin came down from the mountain to the stream-side, where, by a hickory bush under a knoll, her mare Madcap stood at tether. Slipping behind the bush—though no living soul was near to spy on her— she slid off her short skirt and indued a longer one more suitable for riding; rolled the discarded garment into a bundle which she strapped behind the saddle; untethered the mare, and mounted.
At her feet the plain stretched for miles, carpeted for the most part with short sweet turf and dotted in the distance with cattle, red in the sunlight that overlooked the mountain's shoulder. These were Farmer Cordery's cattle, and they browsed within easy radius of a clump of elms clustered about Sweetwater Farm. Some four miles beyond, on the far edge of the plain, a very similar clump of elms hid another farm, Natchett by name, in like manner outposted with cattle; and these were the only habitations of men within the ring of the horizon.