In some surprise, not unmixed with alarm, for the hour was late—as times and country went—and the harvest brought rough strangers into the neighbourhood, Jabez set off at full speed down the avenue, and ere he had reached the first brook, saw her lithe figure advancing buoyantly; and, if his eyes and the gathering mist did not deceive him, a second figure parted from her at the gate.
She was the first to speak. “Whichever way did you people ramble off?”
“Oh, down by the Goyt, Taxal way, Miss Ashton,” answered Jabez.
“Ah! and I went up the Buxton Road; we were certain to miss.”
“I thought I saw you part from some one at the gate? Could I be mistaken?” half-questioned her interlocutor.
“Oh, Crazy Joe! that was all!” and he took her reply in all sincerity, not believing Augusta Ashton capable of untruth.
A day or two went by, during which Jabez wrote to tell Ben Travis he “must arm himself with fortitude”—that “the world was full of disappointments”—that “Miss Chadwick loved elsewhere”—but there was “something more for men to do than die of disappointments or blighted love.”
And yet another day or two, during which Augusta’s moods were as variable as the gusty shadows of the sycamore, changing from wild exuberance which rallied Ellen on her depression, and condescended to play or dance for Sim, to a moping, moody melancholy, enlivened by frequent showers. She was given to snatch up her hat and “run out into the garden for a breath of fresh air,” but she generally came in panting, as if the “run” had been literal; and sometimes she would be found in the house when supposed out of it, and vice versa.
The White Hart had not yet walked away, although Jabez considered it complete. It waited Mr. Ashton’s coming and his verdict, and stood on the easel in the dining-room.