She believes it is the great event of the journey which has unsettled her, for it is the first time in her young life, that she can remember, that she has been away from Blackheath Hall. Then she drifts into thinking of the handsome stranger whom she met at the gate, and still thinking of him, the long hours wear away at last, and morning breaks. It is a hardship for Jess to lie in bed after the pink dawn has ushered in a glorious day, and, creeping silently out of her white nest, in which Lucy is still sleeping soundly, she is soon dressed and out of the house, exploring the grounds. There is another one beneath that roof who is an early riser, and that one Mr. Moore, as he has permitted himself to be called. Looking out from his window, in the dewy light of the early morning, he is amazed to see the lithe, slim figure of Jess gliding like a fairy vision among the great rosebuds of the old-fashioned garden. And, furthermore, he is still more amazed to see her running over the diamond-incrusted grass bare of foot, swinging her shoes and stockings in her right hand as she hurries along. Last night he had formed the opinion of the girl--that she had deceived him, when he had beheld her in all the furbelows of fashionable attire in which she had made her appearance at the farmhouse; now he realized that she was indeed a child of nature, with a heart as light and free as a bird’s. He made haste to join her. Jess was not aware of his presence, for she had not heard his step on the thick, green carpet of grass until a voice beside her said: “Permit me to gather those roses for you, Miss Jess. The thorns on that bush are long and sharp; you will never be able to manage them, I am sure.” A cry of dismay broke from the girl’s lips; down went the shoes and stockings all in a heap in the dew-wet grass. For the first time in her life, Jess wished that the earth could open and swallow her, for, standing directly in the path before her, was the object of her thoughts, and he was looking amusedly down at the bare, brown feet, which the green grass seemed to part wide to display, instead of bending over and pityingly covering them from his sight. For the first time in her life, Jess was covered with a strange, hitherto unknown, unexperienced, bashful confusion. “I did not know that any one would be up for hours yet,” she stammered, gaspingly, thinking, shudderingly, of the awful bareness of those feet, and that she would give anything that she possessed on earth if she could cover them from his gaze--only cover them. A new, sweet shyness was coming over her. It was the dawning of womanhood breaking through the childish existence she had led up to the hour when she had first met the gaze of the man standing before her. “Farm life means a life of early rising,” he returned. “They are astir in the house, all save Miss Lucy. She is rarely visible before eight, when half of the morning is spent, as I often tell her.”