If he could not keep out of people's way, with his foot upon his native heath, it was a pity!
And moreover, there was a point in his meditations, when risk ceased to count, and a mounting excitement took his breath and made the lovely landscape reel before his dazzled eyes. He was going to see Rona—the girl who was a stranger—the girl who was everything—the girl whom he had snatched from the wolves. Nothing else really mattered. No considerations of prudence must be allowed to intervene. Who knew what might, or might not, happen when they actually met?
He had taken some food in his pockets, and on leaving the station he made for the woods. They were full of Sunday strollers; but these, like a flock of sheep, kept all to beaten tracks, and Felix knew every wild hollow and deep thicket in the countryside. He plunged away deep in the glorious spring woodland, amid a white smother of wild cherry bloom, contrasting with the delicate bronze and purple of the bursting hazel bushes. The pale green tips of the larches rose as feathery and faint, as an exquisite dream. It was a wood of fairyland.
There, hidden away, he lay in solitude, eating his bread and cheese, drinking from a tiny spring which he knew like an intimate friend, and trying to still the wild thoughts in his heart by reading a book he had brought in his pocket. But his heart refused to be stilled. He had had nothing to love for so long—nothing ever to love much, for his feeling for his mother had been merely instinctive, and had grown less with advancing intelligence. Now all of a sudden, he loved—for no reason than because a helpless creature had sought his protection. He was going to look once more into her "lost dog" eyes. And to say good-by, after ... that was the bitter thing.
As afternoon faded into evening, he walked by hidden ways down to the old home. The air was full of church bells. He knew every note, and they cried out to him of his boyhood, of his days of innocence and youth. He shook with emotion, he could have wept for the thought of those two dread years cut from his wayward life.
As he approached the corner of the shrubbery he did not meet a soul. All was whelmed in Sabbath peace and stillness. Then he noticed something fresh. A young plantation of healthy-looking beech and copper beech, fenced round from the cattle in the park. He stopped to look at that; and as he halted he saw someone strolling along through the pasture grass, apparently bound for an inspection of this very plantation. It was his brother Denzil. He wore his Sunday clothes, and a decorous hat, and held his Prayer Book under his arm. He stood in contemplation of the promising growth of his new venture—and his reprobate brother stood behind the trees of the shrubbery in contemplation of him.
Then a voice called, "Denzil! Denzil! Are you coming?"
The sound of steps on the gravel sounded, not at all far from where he stood. Miss Rawson was coming down the long drive, and by her side, walking slowly, was a girl as tall as she herself, with chestnut hair falling below her waist, and with a cloak wrapped about her to shelter her from the keen air of the April evening.