But it quickly yielded to another sentiment. After all, Joan was the rogue-knight’s daughter--which must seem to argue that the father could not be wholly base. How came it that so coarse a stock could yield so sweet a blossom? What a darling she was, and how great his good fortune in having lighted on her in his dreary life. She had transformed all that, converting his desert at a touch into a garden of Eden. Now the very loneliness of the place was beautiful, since it ensured their uninterrupted converse. As he went over the hill, his brain seeming wrapt in a luminous mist, he felt very happy, with a pure good happiness. Only one thing lingered in his mind to shadow and disturb it. Why had Sir John likened him to that bird? CHAPTER XI. TWO’S COMPANY Motionless as the trunk against which he leaned, Brion stood waiting in the ilex grove. It was a still misty morning, with a blurr of sun in the East, like a lamp burning behind a ground glass window, and for every reason he felt it more reassuring to address his face doggedly in that direction than towards the glooms which lay behind his back. It was gratifying to know that his resolution, a puissant force impelling it, had conquered those glooms, and to practical effect; still, the point gained, there seemed no present reason for presuming on the providence which had so far favoured him. He preferred to wait, facing the light, near the fringe of the wood for the appointment which had brought him there. But, as the hour struck and passed, some nervous irritation would affect him. He was strung to the adventure, but he wanted it grappled and done with. Why did she not come? All girls and women seemed to regard time as a jest. It had been the same with Mrs Angell: he had never known her once in all his life punctual to an engagement.