"Oh, John! how glad I am to see you! I have come to grief!"
"So I see; but I am not John. I hope, however, I may do as well. What is the matter?"
"It is you, Maurice? Oh, yes, you will do quite as well. I have broken my stirrup-leather, and I am afraid I have sprained my wrist."
"That sounds bad—let me see."
In an instant he had sprung from his horse to help her.
She looked up at him as he came, pushing the tall brushwood away as he stepped through it. It struck her suddenly how like he was to the photograph she had found of him at Kynaston long ago, and what a well-made man he was, and how brave and handsome he looked in his hunting gear.
"How have you managed to hurt your wrist? Let me see it."
"I wrenched it somehow in jumping down; but I don't think that it can be sprained, for I find I can move it now a little; it is only bruised, but it hurts me horribly."
She turned back her cuff and held out the injured hand to him. Maurice stooped over it. There was a moment's silence, the two horses stood waiting patiently by, the solitary fields lay bare and lifeless on every side of them, the little birch-trees rustled mysteriously overhead, the leaden sky, with its chill curtain of unbroken gray cloud, spread monotonously above them; there was no living thing in all the winter landscape besides to listen or to watch them.
Suddenly Maurice Kynaston caught the hand that he held to his lips, and pressed half a dozen passionate kisses upon its outstretched palm.