She looked away from him.
"I am glad I did not slip."
"And I," he said, "am—glad also."
She stooped and picked up the primroses and ran down the slope, her cheeks aflame, a feeling that was something like shame, and yet too full of a strange, indefinable joy to be sullen shame, took possession of her.
With light feet, her hat swinging in her hand, she threaded her way between the trees and sprang on to the grassy road beside the river bank.
He did not follow so quickly, but stood for a moment looking at her, his face pale, his eyes full of a strange, wistful restlessness.
Then Stella heard his step, firm and masterful, behind her. A sudden impulse tempted her sorely to jump into the boat and push off—she could pull a pair of sculls—and her hand was on the edge of the boat, when she heard the sound of bells, and paused with astonishment. Looking up she saw a tiny phæton drawn by a pair of cream-white ponies coming along the road; it was the bells on their harness that she had heard.
They came along at a fair pace, and Stella saw that the phæton was being driven by a coachman in dark-brown livery, but the next moment all her attention was absorbed by the young girl who sat beside him.
She was so fair, so lovely, so ethereal looking, that Stella was spellbound.
A book was in her hand—ungloved and small and white as a child's—but she was not reading. She held it so loosely that as the phæton came along the top of the bank which hid Stella, the book dropped from the lax grasp of the white fingers.