Why this great haste, this sudden hurry to be quit of the farmhouse? As yet there was no rain, and doubtless the high wind would keep off the storm till night. In the last hour--nay, it was not even an hour since she had felt the weight of Downing's hand laid in reproach on her shoulder--her mood had indeed changed. Mrs. Robinson had been reluctant to come in, but now she was very loth to go. There came a time in Penelope's life when every feeling she had ever possessed for Downing--and, looking back, she had to tell herself that she had loved him with every kind of love a woman may give a man--became merged in boundless and awed gratitude, and when her thoughts would especially single out this storm-driven afternoon and evening. But now Mrs. Robinson felt aggrieved by his reserve, surprised at his coldness, and, standing there on the flagged path, waiting while her companion spent what seemed to her much unnecessary time in securely fastening the door behind them, she felt very sore, and inclined to linger unduly. And so, as he came quickly towards her, Downing saw a curious look on her face that caused his own expression suddenly to change. A light leapt into his grey eyes, but Mrs. Robinson had turned pettishly away. 'I must stop a moment,' she said; 'the laces of my shoe have come untied.' The wind was rising swirling clouds of dust below, but Downing caught her words, and understood the mingled feelings which had prompted their utterance. Quickly passing her, he knelt on the lowest of the steps which led from the flagged path to the road, tied her shoe-laces, and then, after glancing up and down the deserted road, he bent over and kissed lingeringly, first one and then the other, of the wearer's feet. Then he sprang up, and, for a moment, he looked at her deprecatingly, but Penelope, mollified by what she took to be an act of unwonted humility and homage, laughed and blushed as she let him put her hand through his arm. They walked down the hill in silence. The wind was still rising, large drops of rain began to fall at intervals, and yet, for the first time that afternoon, Mrs. Robinson felt wholly content. There was something in her nature which responded to wild weather, and, but for the lateness of the hour, she would have liked so to make her way through wind and beating rain back to Monk's Eype.