"How provoking!" was Kate's first utterance. "Mother, I will not walk outside the garden again until they go away; I will not!"
"I am ashamed of you!" answered Mrs. Atheling, angrily. "Will you make yourself a prisoner for these two women? _Tush!_ Who are they? Be yourself, and who is better than you?"
"It is easy talking, Mother. You are as much annoyed as I am. How did they manage to snub us so politely?"
"Position is everything, Kate. A woman in a Duke's carriage, with outriders in scarlet, and coachmen and footmen in silver-laced liveries, would snub the Virgin Mary if she met her in a country lane, dressed in pink dimity, and gathering blue-bells. Try and forget the affair."
"It was her white dress. A woman with her skin ought to know better than to wear white."
"Oh, Mother! if Piers had been with them, what should I have done?"
"I wish he had been there! You were never more lovely. I saw you for a moment, standing at the side of the carriage; with your brown hair blowing, and your cheeks blushing, and your hands full of flowers, and I thought how beautiful you were; and I wish Piers had been there."
"They go away on Saturday. I shall be glad when Saturday is over. I do not think I could bear to see Piers. I should make a little fool of myself."
"Not you! Not you! But it is just as well to keep out of danger."
Certainly neither the Squire nor Kate had any idea of meeting Piers on the following Saturday night when they rode along Atheling lane together. Both of them believed Piers to be far on the way to London. They had been to the village, and were returning slowly homeward in the gloaming. A light like that of dreamland was lying over all the scene; and the silence of the far-receding hills was intensified by the murmur of the streams, and the sleepy piping of a solitary bird. The subtle, fugitive, indescribable fragrance of lilies-of-the-valley was in the air; and a sense of brooding power, of mystical communion between man and nature, had made both the Squire and Kate sympathetically silent.
Suddenly there was the sound of horse's feet coming towards them; and the figure of its rider loomed large and spectral in the gray, uncertain light. Kate knew instantly who it was. In a moment or two they must needs pass each other. She looked quickly into her father's face, and he said huskily, "Be brave, Kate, be brave!"
