Next morning Mary was awake and up before any one was stirring. She did not herself think that she had slept all the night; but she was still young enough to consider an hour or two’s wakefulness a great matter. And she was as much afraid of Ben’s visit being found out, as if he had been the most illegitimate of visitors. She was out soon after six, while the grass was still quite wet with dew, and went wandering up and down the river-walk like a ghost, under the cloistered shade of those great trees which, as yet, let no sunshine through. There was something in the air at that early hour which told that summer was waning, and Mary was chilly with nervousness, which had all the effect of cold. She went all the way down to the river-side, and basked in the sunshine which lay full on the open bit of green bank, by way of overcoming the shivering which had seized her. The world was so still, the birds so noisy,--which rather heightens than impairs the stillness,--the paths so utterly vacant and suggestive, that fancy continually caught glimpses of something disappearing behind the trees. Now it would seem a gliding dream-figure, now the last sweep of a robe just getting out of sight. The ghostliness of the early morning is different, but not less profound, than that of the night; and at six o’clock the Renton woods were as mysterious, as dim under the great shadows of the trees, as any enchanted wood. The sunshine went all round them, drying up the dew on the open bank, and chasing the mists and chills of night; but the river-walk was all brown and grey, and full of clear, mystical distances and windings, broken by upright shafts of trees. Any one might have appeared suddenly at such an hour in such a place. People out of books, people out of one’s own straining fancy, people from the other world. And though it was Ben, and no other, for whom Mary Westbury was waiting, yet her imagination, over-excited, was ready to see anything. And she was alarmed by every waving leaf or bough that swayed in the morning air. If anybody should discover this tryst! If it should be known that Ben had come in this sweet inconceivable sort of way to see her! Had he been a tabooed lover, whose discovery would have involved all sorts of perils, Mary could not have been more afraid.