Rhoda it was who spoke after a very lengthy peace.
"If that's so, there's no call for you to go over to Coombeshead after dinner, David. Belike Margaret Stanbury's forgot."
"I was axed to tea, and I shall go to tea," he answered in a dogged and sulky voice. "We've no right to say she's forgot."
"That's true," Rhoda admitted.
Bartley wished them "good-bye" again and left them. He skipped over the stream and climbed the hill to Sheep's Tor's eastern slopes, while they went up through steep lanes, furze-brakes and stunted trees to the great tableland of the Moor.
Mr. Crocker once turned a moment; and, as he did so, he marked the Bowden clan plodding on in evident silence to Ditsworthy.
"Good God! 'tis like a funeral party after they've got rid of their dead," he thought.
Ten minutes later a dark spot on the heath increased, approached swiftly and turned into a woman. Such haste had she made that her heart throbbed almost painfully. She pressed her hands to it and could not speak for a little while. Her face was bright and revealed an eager but a very sensitive spirit. There was something restless and birdlike about her, and something unutterably sweet; for this girl's temper was woven of pure altruism. Welfare of others, by a sort of fine instinct, had long since become her welfare.
She was four-and-twenty, of good height and a dark complexion. Perhaps her boundless energy preserved her from growing stout and kept her as she was--a fine woman of ripe and flowing figure with a round, beautiful neck and noble arms. Her hair, parted down the middle in the old fashion, was black and without natural gloss; her eyebrows were full and perfect in shape and her eyes shone with the light of a large and sanguine heart. Her face was well shaped and her mouth very gentle. Margaret Stanbury possessed a temperament of fire. She made intuition serve for reason, and instinct take the place of logic. Her capacity both for joy and grief was unusual in her class.
"Whatever will your people say, Bartley?" she gasped. "They'll never forgive me, I'm sure."