Philip Meryon! Now she remembered! He and two other men had taken the shooting on this side of the Chase. Honestly she had forgotten it; honestly her impression was that he had gone to Scotland. But of course none of her family would ever believe it. They would insist she had simply come out to meet him.
What was she to do? She was in a white serge dress, and with Roddy beside her, on that bare heath, she was an object easily recognized. Indeed, as she hesitated, she heard a call in the distance, and saw that Meryon was waving to her and quickening his pace. Instantly, with a leaping pulse, she turned and fled, Roddy beside her, barking his loudest. She ran along the rough track of the heath, as though some vague wild terror had been breathed into her by the local Pan. She ran fleet and light as air—famous as a runner from her childhood. But the man behind her had once been a fine athlete, and he gained upon her fast. Soon she could hear his laugh behind her, his entreaties to her to stop. She had reached the edge of the heath, where the wood began, and the path ran winding down it, with banks of thick fern on either hand.
If it had not been for the dog she could have slipped under the close-set trees, whence the light had already departed, and lain close among the fern. But with Roddy—no chance! She suddenly turned toward her pursuer, and with her hand on the dog's neck awaited him.
"Caught—caught!—by Jove!" cried Philip Meryon, plunging to her through the fern. "Now what do you deserve—for running away?"
"A gentleman would not have tried to catch me!" she said haughtily, as she faced him, with dilating nostrils.
"Take care!—don't be rude to me—I shall take my revenge!"
As he spoke, Meryon was fairly dazzled, intoxicated by the beauty of the vision before him—this angry wood-nymph, half-vanishing like another Daphne into the deep fern amid which she stood. But at the same time he was puzzled—and checked—by her expression. There was no mere provocation in it, no defiance that covers a yielding mind; but, rather, an energy of will, a concentrated force, that held at bay a man whose will was the mere register of his impulses.
"You forget," said Hester coolly, "that I have Roddy with me." And as she spoke the dog couching at her side poked up his slender nose through the fern and growled. He did not like Sir Philip.
Meryon looked upon her smiling—his hands on his sides. "Do you mean to say that when you ran you did not mean me to follow?"
"On the contrary, if I ran, it was evidently because I wished to get away."