She gazed furtively here and there, divided between the hope and fear that her longing would be sated--she would meet him. Riders passed and repassed. The little crowds gathered, thickened, dispersed. She was disappointedly telling herself that as the shower had temporarily subsided she ought to be returning home, when her heart gave a leap. A rider who was trotting towards her was the man--the man strongly if slightly built, handsome, fair, if stern--who alone among men had conquered that heart, who, although despair had driven her to hold her own against him, was her master. It was all over--fate had decided--they two must once more meet! There was no escape. He rode up. She blanched, but looked him steadily in the face. He gazed sadly, beseechingly, yet with that imperious compelling glance which had so often made her quail--into those beautiful brown eyes. "We meet again, you see," he said, in a harsh, strained voice. He felt on the rack--to him, wildly panting, yearning to take her in his arms after weary, maddening months of longing, that gulf between them seemed a very hell. "So it seems," she said, with a pitiful attempt at a laugh. "I thought you were in Kamschatka, or Bombay--or anywhere!" "I have come back," he returned, lamely, mechanically accompanying her as she rode out of shelter--she would not, could not, stay there and bandy words with him! "I felt--I must know--the worst!" Involuntarily she reined in, and so suddenly that she startled her steed, and it was some moments before the mare’s nerves were calmed. Then she turned a white, set face upon her self-elected escort. "What do you mean, Lord Vansittart?" she asked scornfully, and her eyes flashed. "You--know," he hoarsely said. "I am not so utterly vain as to think that where I have failed, other and--and--more attractive fellows may not succeed!" "You know, or ought to know, that what you are saying is absurd!" she faltered. What had she thought, feared? She hardly knew, she only felt a tremendous relief. Thank Heaven, even had she been secretly vowed to the cloister, her conduct since their parting could not have borne closer scrutiny! "You must remember--what I said--I never, never, intend to marry--anyone. I shall never, never, change my mind--about _that_!" He said nothing; but glanced at her--a curious glance. A puzzle to him since he first had felt encouraged to believe from symptoms which only a watchful, anxious lover would perceive, that she involuntarily, perhaps even unconsciously, loved him--she had remained an insoluble problem during the long days of their separation when he pondered on the subject the slow, lagging hours through--and, now again, she bid fair to be as great a problem as ever. For he felt, he knew, that her reception of him--her pallor, the strange look in her eyes and the curious pitch of her voice--why, the veriest fool alive would not have mistaken her demeanour or one of its details for indifference!