She would not pretend to herself that she thought he would come to her that day, and therefore she busied herself in the kitchen and about the house, giving directions to her two maids as though the afternoon would pass as all other days did pass in that household. They usually dined at four, and she rarely in these summer months went far from the house before that hour. At four precisely she sat down with her father, and then said that she was going up as far as Helpholme after dinner. Helpholme was a solitary farmhouse in another parish, on the border of the moor, and Mr. Woolsworthy asked her whether he should accompany her. “Do, papa,” she said, “if you are not too tired.” And yet she had thought how probable it might be that she should meet John Broughton on her walk. And so it was arranged; but just as dinner was over, Mr. Woolsworthy remembered himself. “Gracious me,” he said, “how my memory is going. Gribbles, from Ivybridge, and old John Poulter, from Bovey, are coming to meet here by appointment. You can’t put Helpholme off till to-morrow?” Patience, however, never put off anything, and therefore at six o’clock, when her father had finished his slender modicum of toddy, she tied on her hat and went on her walk. She started with a quick step, and left no word to say by which route she would go. As she passed up along the little lane which led towards Oxney Combe, she would not even look to see if he was coming towards her; and when she left the road, passing over a stone stile into a little path which ran first through the upland fields, and then across the moor ground towards Helpholme, she did not look back once, or listen for his coming step. She paid her visit, remaining upwards of an hour with the old bedridden mother of the tenant of Helpholme. “God bless you, my darling!” said the old woman as she left her; “and send you some one to make your own path bright and happy through the world.” These words were still ringing in her ears with all their significance as she saw John Broughton waiting for her at the first stile which she had to pass after leaving the farmer’s haggard. “Patty,” he said, as he took her hand, and held it close within both his own, “what a chase I have had after you!” “And who asked you, Captain Broughton?” she answered, smiling. “If the journey was too much for your poor London strength, could you not have waited till to-morrow morning, when you would have found me at the parsonage?” But she did not draw her hand away from him, or in any way pretend that he had not a right to accost her as a lover. “No, I could not wait. I am more eager to see those I love than you seem to be.” “How do you know whom I love, or how eager I might be to see them? There is an old woman there whom I love, and I have thought nothing of this walk with the object of seeing her.” And now, slowly drawing her hand away from him, she pointed to the farmhouse which she had left.