Standing so, it happened that she did not see the horseman who was just gaining the crest of the nearest hill between her and the City. The wind being from her, she did not even hear the hoof-beats until the horse had turned from the glare of the sun into the shadow of the fern-bordered lane. The first she knew of it, she glanced over her shoulder and saw the red-cloaked figure riding toward her along the grass-grown path. As naturally as a flower opens its heart at the coming of the sun, she leaned toward him, breathing his name; then in an impulse equally natural, as he leaped from his saddle before her, she drew back and half averted her face, flickering red and white like the blossoms she was clasping to her breast. He stopped abruptly, a short stretch of grass still between them,—and it soothed her bruised pride a little that there was no longer any confident ease in his manner but only hesitation and uncertainty. His voice was greatly troubled as he spoke: “Never can I forgive myself for having wounded you, sweetheart, yet had I hoped that you might forgive me, because I knew not what I did and because I have suffered so sorely for it.” “_You_ have suffered,” she repeated with a little accent of bitterness. “I beseech you by my love that you do not doubt it!” Hesitation gave way before a warmth of reproach. “For a man to know that he has wounded what he would have died to shield—that he has wronged where he would have given his life to honor—that it may be he has lost what is body and soul to him,—what else is that but suffering?” It was only a very little that her face turned toward him, and he could not see how her downcast eyes were taking fire from his voice. He stood looking at her in despair, until something in the poise of her head taught him a new rune among love’s spells. Drawing softly near her, he spoke in noblest conciliation: “Is it your pride that cannot pardon me, Lady of Avalcomb? Do I seem to sue for grace too boldly because I forget to make my body match the humbleness of my heart? Except in prayer or courtesy, we are not loose of knee, we Angles, but I would stoop as low as I lowest might if that could make you kinder, dear one.” Baring his head, he knelt down at her feet,—and the difference between this and the time when he had bent before her in the Abbey, was the difference between tender jest and tenderest earnest. “Thus then do I ask you to give me back your love,” he said gently,—and would have said more but that she turned, stirred to a kind of generous shame. “It needs not that, lord! I know you did not mean it. And they have told me that—that I have no right to be angry with you—” She broke off, as looking into his face she saw something that startled her into forgetfulness of all else. “Why are your cheeks so hollow?” she demanded. “And so gray—as though you had lost blood? Lord, what has come near you?”