Mr. George Neville opened his eyes with astonishment. This arch question, and Kate's manner of putting it, convinced him the obnoxious missive was not a love-letter at all. He was sorry now, and vexed with himself for having called her a coquette, and made her cry. After all, what was the mighty favor she had asked of him? to carry a sealed letter from somebody or other to a person who, to be sure, had been her lover, but was so no longer. A simple act of charity and civility, and he had refused it in injurious terms. He was glad he had lent his horse, and almost sorry he had not taken the letter himself. To these chivalrous self-reproaches succeeded an uneasy feeling that perhaps the lady might retaliate somehow. It struck him, on reflection, that the arch query she had let fly at him was accompanied with a certain sparkle of the laughing eye, such as ere now had, in his experience, preceded a stroke of the feminine claw. As he walked up and down, uneasy, awaiting the fair one's return, her father came up, and asked him to dine and sleep. What made the invitation more welcome was that it in reality came from Kate. "She tells me she has borrowed your horse," said the Squire, "so says she, I am bound to take care of you till daylight, and indeed our ways are perilous at night." "She is an angel!" cried the lover, all his ardor revived by this unexpected trait; "my horse, my house, my hand, and my heart, are all at her service by night and day." Mr. Peyton, to wile away the time before dinner, invited him to walk out and see--a hog: deadly fat, as times went. But Neville denied himself that satisfaction on the plea that he had his orders to await Miss Peyton's return where he was. The Squire was amused at his excessive docility, and winked, as much as to say, "I have been once upon a time in your plight;" and so went and gloried in his hog alone. The lover fell into a delicious reverie. He enjoyed by anticipation the novel pleasure of an evening passed all alone with this charming girl. The father, being friendly to his suit, would go to sleep after dinner; and then by the subdued light of a wood-fire he would murmur his love into that sweet ear for hours, until the averted head should come round by degrees, and the delicious lips yield a coy assent. He resolved the night should not close till he had surprised, overpowered, and secured his lovely bride. These soft meditations reconciled him for awhile to the prolonged absence of their object. In the midst of them he happened to glance through the window; and he saw a sight that took his very breath away, and rooted him in amazement to the spot. About a mile from the house a lady in a scarlet habit was galloping across country as the crow flies. Hedge, ditch, or brook, nothing stopped her an instant; and as for the pace, She seemed in running to devour the way. It was Kate Peyton on his piebald horse. CHAPTER IV