Now its sunshine was blotted out at a word. He shivered a little as they turned back. "Bring the mare around to the front!" he called as they passed the stable. "I think I will ride back with you!" he added to Mr. Holloway.
He left the professor to attend to some affairs in town, and when he got out to the University he found that Frances was lazily asleep. He sent to ask if she would take a ride, and waited with no show of impatience until she came running down the stair, habited and gloved.
"A ride!" she called. "How delightful! If I had had Starlight, I should not have been so lazy, but father was out with you. Has he any new suggestions?"
"Not one!" Montague smiled, and in the darkened room, Frances did not notice how white he was.
"We had better hurry!" she said, "or we will lose the sunset."
Montague opened the door as she spoke. The shadows of the maples stretched long across the quadrangle, and the corridor and houses across the way shimmered in the low and golden sunlight. The vine about the pillar stretched brave new tendrils upward, and proudly waved its glossy leaves.
Frances, with quick sight for each beauty of the outside world and ready speech of field and flower and wayside growth and bloom, kept her own blithe atmosphere about her, as they rode.
Far out where the road climbed high, she drew rein. They were in time for the sunset glory. It flooded the valley below them with mystic light, kindled the skies beyond the hill-tops with scarlet fires, against which the peaks loomed dark, and sent banners of trailing clouds far over the zenith.
With hands clasped upon the pommel, she watched the scene with delighted eyes. Montague pulled his horse close to hers, and leaned over, his hand on Starlight's mane. So, with the golden light of the sun streaming around her, he could see every line of her face.