While indulging in this pleasant conjecture, she was surprised at seeing still another pair of mounted men, filing out from under the trees, side by side also, and following the first two at that distance and with the air which seemed to proclaim them servitors. "It may not be he, after all!" she reflected within herself, her brow again shadowing over. "He said he would be alone with only Hubert, and--" Her reflections were brought to an abrupt termination by seeing the grey horse, after plunging across the stream, turn head uphill in the direction of Ruardean. There was no time to make further scrutiny of the _quartette_ descending the opposite slope. In twenty minutes, or less if he meant speed, he on the grey would be up to them; and if Reginald Trevor, that would be awkward, whether on his way to Hollymead or not. It was Sabrina who now counselled hastening home; which they did with a quick free step their country training and Forest practice had made easy, as familiar, to them. CHAPTER EIGHT. A HOUSE IN TUDOR STYLE. It would be difficult to imagine a more enchanting spot for a dwelling-place than that where stood Hollymead House. Near the north-western angle of the Forest of Dean, it commanded a view of the Wye where this beautiful stream, after meandering through the verdant meads of Herefordshire, over old red sandstone, assaults the carboniferous rocks of Monmouth, whose bold, high ridges, lying transversely to its course, look as if no power of water could ever have cut through them. But the Wye has, in its flow of countless ages, carved out--in Spanish-American phrase _canoned_--a channel with banks here and there rising nigh a thousand feet above the level of its bed. Between these it glides with swift current; not direct, but in snake-like contortions, fantastically doubling back upon itself, almost to touching. Here and there cliffs rise sheer up from the water's edge, grand mural escarpments of the mountain limestone, such as show the "tors" and dales of Derbyshire. The Codwell rocks below Lydbrook, forming the base of the famed "Symonds' Yat," are of this character, their grim facades seamed and broken into separate battlements, giving them resemblance to ruined castles, but such as could have been inhabited only "in those days when there were giants on the earth."