"You are right; lad; it does not matter. They have done me good service, and will yet, though they were not made for carrying nosegays."
"There is somebody besides yourself plucking posies on the Flat. See, how large the figure looks against the sky. It might be your Titaness, John—
'Like Proserpina gathering flowers,
Herself the fairest—'
—no, not fairest; for I declare she looks very like your friend Grey-gown—I beg her pardon—Miss March."
"It is she," said John, so indifferently that I suspect that fact had presented itself to him for at least two minutes before I found it out.
"There's certainly a fatality about your meeting her."
"Not the least. She has this morning taken her walk in a different direction, as I did; and we both chanced again to hit upon the same," answered John, gravely and explanatorily. "Come away down the slope. We must not intrude upon a lady's enjoyments."
He carried me off, much against my will, for I had a great wish to see again that fresh young face, so earnest, cheerful, and good. Also, as I laboured in vain to convince my companion, the said face indicated an independent dignity which would doubtless make its owner perfectly indifferent whether her solitary walk were crossed by two gentlemen or two hundred.
John agreed to this; nevertheless, he was inexorable. And, since he was "a man of the world"—having, in his journeys up and down the country for my father, occasionally fallen into "polite" society—I yielded the point to him and submitted to his larger experience of good breeding.
However, Fate, kinder than he, took the knot of etiquette into her own hands, and broke it.