Surely he must have loved her even then, he thought. What, was it possible that he had known her but a few days at that time? His recollection of her coming to him was as that of someone to whom he had been attached for years.
He smiled as he recalled the tale which he had once read of the magician Merlin, who had woven a bed of rushes for the wife of King Mark, on which she had but to lie and forthwith she saw whomsoever she wished to see. Well, here he was in the land of King Mark of Cornwall, and there was the place where he had made his bed....
He had been contemplating the comfortable hollow between the rocks, thinking his thoughts, and he did not raise his eyes for some time. When he did he saw Nelly Polwhele coming toward him, not along the cliffs, but across the breadth of moorland beyond which was the Court Park.
CHAPTER XXI
Tis by a happy chance we are brought together,” Wesley said while he held her hand.
But Nelly Polwhele made haste to assure him that it was not by chance; she had been with her young ladies at the Court, she said, and from the high ground she had spied upon him on his walk, and had come to him through the sparse hedges of the park.
He smiled at the eagerness with which she disclaimed such an ally as chance. He had not had a wide experience of young women, but he had a shrewd conviction that the greater number of them would have hastened to acknowledge his suggestion rather than to repudiate it. She was innocent as a child.
“By whatsoever means we have been brought together, I for one must think it happy,” said he. “Do you go to your friends yonder every day?”