"As well as usual, I think, sir," was the man's reply, who drove his own fly. "He walked through the fields to church on Sunday. The ladies came in the basket-carriage."
"What a fine harvest you have had!"
"Beautiful, sir. Couldn't be better. My little stock of corn never was finer."
"By the way, Williams. I had a portmanteau somewhere in the train: the guard put it out, I suppose. You can bring it up if you like."
"Thank you, sir."
Frederick St. John walked on. Striking into a path on the left, he continued his way through the fields, and came in due course to the back of the Rectory. From thence the way was through the cultivated grounds, the lovely gardens of Castle Wafer: the whole way being not much more than a mile and a half. By the highway it was a good deal longer.
Seated under a projecting rock, a sketch-book and pencils lying beside her, was one of the fairest girls ever seen. She was reading. Going out to sketch, that mellow day, she had yielded to idleness (as she often did), and was passing the time in reading, instead of working. She was the Dean of Westerbury's niece, Sarah Beauclerc: and the dean was wont to tell her that she should not take a book with her when she went out to sketch. It might come to the same thing, so far as working went, she would answer in her independence: if she did not read, she might only sit and dream. But the dean was not at the Rectory just now: only his wife, daughter, and niece. This young lady's home had been with them since the death of her mother, the Lady Sarah Beauclerc: her father was in India.
The soft bloom mantled in Sarah Beauclerc's cheeks when she saw who had turned the corner and was upon her. His appearance took her by surprise: neither she nor any one else had known that he was coming. She put down her book and was about to rise: but he laid his hand upon her and sat down on the bench beside her. He kept her hand in his; he saw the blushes on her cheeks; and that her eyes fell beneath the gaze of his own.
But the liking between them was not destined to go on to love: though indeed on her part, and perhaps also on his, the feeling had been very like love once. In her behaviour to him she had been a finished coquette: he set it down to caprice, to a want of real affection for him; in reality it grew out of her love. She believed that, come what would, he was to marry Lady Anne St. John; she believed that he accepted the destiny, though he might not be unwilling to amuse himself before he entered on it: and, one moment she had been gentle, tender, yielding, in obedience to her secret love; the next she would be cold, repelling, the very essence of scorn. This had partially worked his cure: but in a meeting like the present, coming suddenly upon her in all her beauty, the old feelings would rise again in his heart. Ah! how different might things have been in this life for one other woman, had Sarah Beauclerc only known the real state of affairs between him and Lady Anne!
But she still retained enough of the past feeling to be confused--confused in manner as in mind. She put questions as to his unexpected appearance, not hearing one syllable of the answers; and Frederick St. John detected the secret joy, and his voice grew more low and tender as he bent over her, and a smile, than which earth could possess nothing sweeter, sat on his lips. Perhaps even now, had he remained at Castle Wafer--but of what use speculating upon what might have been?