It was not long--though the wood on the western hill already threw its shadow into the glen--before the sound of voices and hoofs emerged from the lane. Sally's remark reached him first:
"They may be nice people enough, for aught I know, but their ways are not my ways, and there's no use in trying to mix them."
"That's a fact!" said Mark. "Hallo, here's Gilbert, ahead of us!"
They rode into the stream together, and let their horses drink from the clear, swift-flowing water. In Mark's and Sally's eyes, Gilbert was as grave and impassive as usual, but Martha Deane was conscious of a strange, warm, subtle power, which seemed to envelop her as she drew near him. Her face glowed with a sweet, unaccustomed flush; his was pale, and the shadow of his brows lay heavier upon his eyes. Fate was already taking up the invisible, floating filaments of these two existences, and weaving them together.
Of course it happened, and of course by the purest accident, that Mark and Sally first reached the opposite bank, and took the narrow wood-road, where the loose, briery sprays of the thickets brushed them on either side. Sally's hat, and probably her head, would have been carried off by a projecting branch, had not Mark thrown his arm around her neck and forcibly bent her forwards. Then she shrieked and struck at him with her riding-whip, while Mark's laugh woke all the echoes of the woods.
"I say, Gilbert!" he cried, turning back in his saddle, "I'll hold _you_ responsible for Martha's head; it's as much as _I_ can do to keep Sally's on her shoulders."
Gilbert looked at his companion, as she rode slowly by his side, through the cool, mottled dusk of the woods. She had drawn the strings of her beaver through a buttonhole of her riding-habit, and allowed it to hang upon her back. The motion of the horse gave a gentle, undulating grace to her erect, self-reliant figure, and her lips, slightly parted, breathed maidenly trust and consent. She turned her face towards him and smiled, at Mark's words.
"The warning is unnecessary," he said. "You will give me no chance to take care of you, Martha."
He hesitated; he would have said "No," but finally evaded a direct answer.
"I would be glad enough to do you a service--even so little as that," were his words, and the tender tone in which they were spoken made itself evident to his own ears.