In the midst of this pre-occupation, she almost forgot Calladine, that theatrical man, and the excitability of his manner recently towards her. She had not seen him again, for which she was thankful; she could not have met him without embarrassment. The idea of marriage was incongruous and slightly absurd. She belonged to herself, and to herself only; and the suggestion that Calladine or any one else should wish to capture her was not serious but merely laughable. It had not occurred to her that he, as well as Lovel, might be unhappy on her account; such a thought would have distressed her exceedingly. It was entirely without thought of Calladine, save for an occasional fleeting hope that he might not have chosen to ride in the direction as herself, that she roved over the Downs in search of Lovel. A fortnight passed before she found him. She could, doubtless, have met him long before by simply walking down the village street, but that would not have been at all to her purpose, and she had in fact been at pains to avoid any such encounter. At the end of a fortnight, having ridden up to the White Horse, from where the widest view was to be obtained, she discerned a long way off, up by the clump of beeches on the horizon, a flock of sheep accompanied by a shepherd. Unhesitatingly, even gaily, she started off in his pursuit. She was happy to think that their long estrangement was drawing to its end. She skipped in her mind over the preliminaries which must be got over before they could take up their friendship again on its old easy terms. She, with a mind impatient of all but essentials, would preferably have dispensed with these preliminaries, explanations, upbraidings, and possibly abuse. She wanted to waste no time; there were so many things she wanted to tell him; she wanted to tell him how her pony had gone lame from picking up a stone in his shoe; she wanted to tell him again of the melancholy effect produced upon her by her visit to Starvecrow; she wanted to ask him to splice her trout-rod and come with her one evening down to the quiet pool of the brook. Her eagerness grew with the seething of these small schemes as she urged her pony across the grass. She was approaching Lovel by a devious way, going down into the valleys, where she would escape his notice, until she could strike directly up the hill and top the crest suddenly before his eyes. Her own eyes sparkled over the precautions she was taking. She thought that she had now gone far enough along the low reaches of the valleys, and set her pony at the hill; they mounted the long, steep incline, like going upon an adventure. On the breeze came the tinkling of the sheep-bells, as the flock moved cropping.