It was a bright day in that mellow season when summer is merging into autumn. A few fields of the later grain were lying out yet, but most of the golden store had been gathered into barns. The sunlight glistened on the leaves of the trees, lighting up their rich tints of brown and red—tints which never come until the season of passing away.
Halting at a stile which led to a field white with stubble, were two children and a young lady. Not very young children, either, for the younger of the two must have been thirteen. Pale girls both, with light hair, and just now a disagreeable expression of countenance. They were insisting upon crossing that stile to pass through the field: one of them, in fact, had already mounted, and they did not like to be thwarted in their wish.
"You cross old thing!" cried she on the stile. "You always object to our going where we want to go. What dislike have you to the field, pray, that we may not cross it?"
"I have no dislike to it, Emily. I am only obeying your father's injunctions. You know he has forbidden you to go on Mrs. Ryle's lands."
She spoke in calm tones; a sweet, persuasive voice. She had a sweet and gentle face, too, with delicate features, and large blue eyes. It is Maude Trevlyn. Eight years have passed since you last saw her, and she is twenty-one. In spite of her girlish, graceful figure, which scarcely reaches middle height, she bears a look of the Trevlyns. Her head is well set upon her shoulders, thrown somewhat back, as you may see in Miss Diana Trevlyn. She wears a grey flowing cloak, and pretty blue bonnet.
"The lands are not Mrs. Ryle's," retorted the girl on the stile. "They are papa's."
"They are Mrs. Ryle's as long as she rents them. It is all the same. Mr. Chattaway has forbidden you to cross them. Come down from the stile, Emily."
"No. I shall jump over it."
It was ever thus. Except in the presence of Miss Diana Trevlyn, the girls were openly rude and disobedient to Maude. Expected to teach them, she was denied the ordinary authority vested in a governess. And Maude could not emancipate herself: she must suffer and submit.
Emily Chattaway put her foot over the top bar of the stile, preparatory to jumping over it, when the sound of a horse was heard, and she turned her head. Riding along the lane at a quick pace was a gentleman of some three or four-and-twenty years: a tall man, as far as could be seen, who sat his horse well. He reined in when he saw them, and bent down a pleasant face, with a pleasant smile upon it. The sun shone into his fine dark eyes, as he stooped to shake hands with Maude.