He had finished his breakfast now, but he permitted himself the luxury of repose for a few moments longer. He threw himself back on the bank, his head resting on his clasped hands, and his eyes gazing up, up, through the interlacing boughs of the trees, outlined now with shifting silver in the morning light, through the ethereal leafage, still half unfolded, up to the heights of delicate blue beyond. He had fancied that there was not much breeze this morning; yet, as he lay thus quiet he could hear a faint rustling in the undergrowth, and the occasional crackling of twigs—a squirrel perhaps; but when was a wood known to be absolutely still? Besides the incidental noises attending the passage of living things—flying, running, creeping—the creaking and swaying of boughs, the fluttering of leaves, had not such places a mysterious movement and vitality of their own? Was there not always a stir, a whisper, in their midst produced by no ostensible cause? Smiling upwards, his head still pillowed on his hands, Richard was meditating on some half-forgotten page of Thoreau which seemed to bear upon this fancy of his, when suddenly a woman’s figure appeared on the crest of the bank close to him, and without warning sprang down beside him. Rosalie Fiander, with the skirt of her print gown gathered up so as to form a receptacle for the mass of primroses which she had been gathering, and the fragrance of which was now wafted to Richard’s nostrils—Rosalie Fiander, with minute dewdrops clinging to her dark hair, with morning roses on her cheeks, and the morning light shining in her eyes—a vision of grace and beauty, more captivating even than the glowing pictured Rosalie of the cornfield or the stately heroine of Yellowham Woods. Richard sat up, the colour rushing over his sunburnt face; he had divested himself of hat and coat, his waistcoat hung loosely open, and his shirt was unfastened at the throat. For a moment Rosalie did not identify him; then, as he slowly rose to his feet, she too blushed. ‘I beg your pardon; I did not know anyone was here. I had a half-hour to spare before breakfast and ran out to pick some primroses. This is my wood, you know,’ she added hastily; ‘I am not trespassing unless when I take a short cut home across your uncle’s field.’ Ploughman Richard, with his bare brown arms and ruffled head, was not at all alarming. She scarcely recognised in him the trim, severe young man who had called on her ceremoniously a few weeks before, still less the mysterious personage who had driven her home from Dorchester, who had said such strange things, and looked at her so oddly—Isaac Sharpe’s nephew was just like anybody else after all. Being blithe of heart this bright spring morning, she smiled on him pleasantly, and, lowering the folds of her gown, displayed the primroses.