He had mounted while speaking, and, lifting his hat with studious politeness, cantered off, while Rajah went bounding and barking before him. "What a bright little fairy it is--and so clever with her pencil! who the deuce can she be?" he was thinking, while Sybil, with a vague sense of disappointment and doubt, looked after him, half fearing that she had been too pointed in her hint that he should leave her; and yet how were they to continue such meetings as strangers. In her lonely life, at least latterly, since they had settled at Porthellick, she had met but few persons, and with none so pleasing as this young officer. She hoped to meet him again on a more recognisable footing, for she felt that though stolen interviews might be very sweet, they could not be without some peril; and to the young girl's mind, it seemed that the formation of the acquaintance--the whole adventure--was quite like some of the episodes to be read of in novels; for a box from "Mudie's," came regularly to Porthellick Villa, and perhaps, by the laws of such literature, her strange friend might prove a peer of the realm--a prince it might be, incog.; who could say? Sybil lingered long by the lonely tarn, watching the white swans floating among the broad-leaved water-lilies, thinking over all the stranger had said, recalling the pleasantly modulated tones of his voice and the expression of his dark blue eyes (if blue they were), till the sound of hoofs on the distant highway drew her attention in that direction, and with something perhaps of jealousy and pique, she saw him gallop past with two ladies, both well mounted on bright bay horses. They were the Trecarrels, dashing and handsome girls, and the sound of their merry voices and ringing laughter came clearly over the moor as they rode at a scamper towards Lanteglos, on the roof of the old parish church of which the arms of the Trelawneys and Trecarrels have been carved for centuries. "And these girls have him with them always," thought she, as she turned homeward. "What matter is it to me--the acquaintance of a couple of days? why should the idea of him affect me so?" After this day she sought the vicinity of the rock-pillar and the tarn no more.