While Clayton was admiring secretly the velvet of her lips, back she leaped, as if stung by a snake; then proudly stood confronting. Clayton sprang up to defend her; but there was no antagonist. All he saw was a man on horseback, passing silently over the turf, behind a low bank crowned with fern. Here a narrow track, scarce visible, saved the traveller some few yards, subtending as it did the angle where the two paths met. Clayton could not see the horse, for the thick brake–fern eclipsed him. But he felt that the nag was rather tired, and getting sad about supper–time. The rider seemed to be making a face, intended to express the most abstract philosophy possible, and superlunary contemplation. Any rabbit skilled in physiognomy would have come out of his hole again, quite reassured thereby. A short man he was, and apparently one meant by his mother for ruddiness; and still the brick–red of his hair proclaimed some loyalty to her intention. But his face was browned, and flaked across, like a red potato roasting, and his little eyes, sharp as a glazierʼs diamond, and twinkling now at the zenith, belied his absent attitude. Then as he passed by a shadowy oak, which swallowed him up in a moment, that oak (if it had been duly vocal) would have repeated these words— “Well, if that ainʼt the parsonʼs daughter, grind me under a curry–stone. What a sly minx!—but devilish pretty. Youʼre a deal too soft, John Rosedew”. As he passed on towards Nowelhurst the lovers felt that they had been seen, and perhaps watched ever so long; and then they felt uncomfortable. The young lady was the first to recover presence of mind. She pressed on her glossy round head the hat which had been so long in her left hand, and, drawing a long breath, looked point–blank at the wondering stare of her sweetheart. “Well, Clayton, we may make up our minds for it now”. “For what, I should like to know? Who cares for that interloping, beetroot–coloured muff”? “He is no muff at all, I can tell you, but an exceedingly clever man. Do you mean to say you donʼt know him”? “Not I, from Esau or Ishmael. And he looks like a mixture of both”. “He is Doctor Rufus Hutton”.