I went along the road to Eberwich. The church bells were ringing boisterously, with the careless boisterousness of the brooks and the birds and the rollicking coltsfoots and celandines. A few people were hastening blithely to service. Miners and other labouring men were passing in aimless gangs, walking nowhere in particular, so long as they reached a sufficiently distant public house. I reached the ‘Hollies.’ It was much more spruce than it had been. The yard, however, and the stables had again a somewhat abandoned air. I asked the maid for George. “Oh, master’s not up yet,” she said, giving a little significant toss of her head, and smiling. I waited a moment. “But he rung for a bottle of beer about ten minutes since, so I should think——” she emphasised the word with some ironical contempt, “—he won’t be very long,” she added, in tones which conveyed that she was not by any means sure. I asked for Meg. “Oh, Missis is gone to church—and the children—But Miss Saxton is in, she might——” “Emily!” I exclaimed. The maid smiled. “She’s in the drawing-room. She’s engaged, but perhaps if I tell her——” “Yes, do,” said I, sure that Emily would receive me. I found my old sweetheart sitting in a low chair by the fire, a man standing on the hearthrug pulling his moustache. Emily and I both felt a thrill of old delight at meeting. “I can hardly believe it is really you,” she said, laughing me one of the old intimate looks. She had changed a great deal. She was very handsome, but she had now a new self-confidence, a fine, free indifference. “Let me introduce you. Mr. Renshaw, Cyril. Tom, you know who it is you have heard me speak often enough of Cyril. I am going to marry Tom in three weeks’ time,” she said, laughing. “The devil you are!” I exclaimed involuntarily. “If he will have me,” she added, quite as a playful afterthought. Tom was a well-built fair man, smoothly, almost delicately tanned. There was something soldierly in his bearing, something self-conscious in the way he bent his head and pulled his moustache, something charming and fresh in the way he laughed at Emily’s last preposterous speech. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked. “Why didn’t you ask me?” she retorted, arching her brows. “Mr. Renshaw,” I said. “You have out-manoeuvred me all unawares, quite indecently.” “I am very sorry,” he said, giving one more twist to his moustache, then breaking into a loud, short laugh at his joke. “Do you really feel cross?” said Emily to me, knitting her brows and smiling quaintly. “I do!” I replied, with truthful emphasis. She laughed, and laughed again, very much amused. “It is such a joke,” she said. “To think you should feel cross now, when it is—how long is it ago——? “I will not count up,” said I. “Are you not sorry for me?” I asked of Tom Renshaw. He looked at me with his young blue eyes, eyes so bright, so naïvely inquisitive, so winsomely meditative. He did not know quite what to say, or how to take it.