She pressed his hand for answer. But the intensity of his joy, as she read it in his eyes, had in it--for her--and for the moment--just a shade of painfulness. It seemed to claim something from her that she could not quite give--or that she might not be able to give. Some secret force in her cried out in protest. But the slight shrinking passed almost immediately. She threw off her hat, and lifted her beautiful brow to him in a smiling silence. He drew her to him again, and as she felt the pressure of his arm about her, heart and soul yielded utterly. She was just the young girl, loving and beloved. "Do your father and mother really approve?" she asked at last as she disengaged herself, and her hands went up to her hot cheeks, and then to her hair, to smooth it back into something like order. "Let us go and see." He raised her joyously to her feet. She looked at him a little wistfully. "I'm rather afraid of them, Edward. You must tell them not to expect too much. And I shall always--want to be myself." "Darling! what else could they, could any one want for you--or for me!" The tone showed him a little startled, perhaps stung, by her words. And he added, with a sudden flush: "Of course I know what Coryston will say to you. He seems to think us all hypocrites and tyrants. Well--you will judge. I won't defend my father and mother. You will soon know them. You will see what their lives are." He spoke with feeling. She put her hand in his, responding. "You'll write to Corry--won't you? He's a dreadful thorn in all our sides; and yet--" Her eyes filled with tears. "You love him?" he said, gently. "That's enough for me." "Even if he's rude and violent?" she pleaded. "Do you think I can't keep my temper--when it's _your_ brother? Try me." He clasped her hand warm and close in his strong fingers. And as she moved through the young green of the woodland he saw her as a spirit of delight, the dark masses of her hair, her white dress and all her slender grace flecked by the evening sun. These were moments, he knew, that could never come again; that are unique in a man's history. He tried to hold and taste them as they passed; tormented, like all lovers, by what seems, in such crises, to be the bitter inadequacy and shallowness of human feeling. They took a more round-about path home than that which had brought them into the wood, and at one point it led them through a clearing from which there was a wide view of undulating ground scattered with houses here and there. One house, a pleasant white-walled dwelling, stood conspicuously forward amid copses a couple of fields away. Its garden surrounded by a sunk fence could be seen, and the figure of a lady walking in it. Marcia stopped to look. "What a charming place! Who lives there?" Newbury's eyes followed hers. He hesitated a moment. "That is the model farm." "Mr. Betts's farm?" "Yes. Can you manage that stile?"