CHAPTER III.

Up from the plains a steep road rose on the downs, a road so steep, so
dazzling white that it looked like a white thread hanging on a green
surface.

Betty Ives rode slowly up the hill, leaning slightly forward to ease her
horse as she did so. Though November had set in, the sun was still
powerful, and both horse and rider were a little oppressed by its heat.

Some very close observer might have seen a change in the girl's face--a
very slight change, something that deepened the expression of the lovely
eyes, something that played softly like the shadow of a great happiness
on the mobile lips. She was thinking, thinking deeply as she rode.

Folks said that Betty Ives was very hard to win. Ruth Thornton, the
squire's buxom daughter, would have given years of her life for one of
the passionate appeals young Robins had made so often to Betty in vain.
Lady Rachel Tremame had almost broken her heart when Betty, at the
Newbury ball, had so attracted Sir Harry Clare that he had no eyes for
other than her. Yet amid her many adorers, fair Betty, with the
carelessness of inexperience, passed unpitying and fancy free.

But now times were changed: fair Betty's heart was given away.

Yet John Johnstone had not found his courtship easy, it was long before
he made any way. He wooed proudly, and she took his subjection as due to
herself, and was not grateful for that which she deemed her right. But
the young man loved her the better for this, for he was one of those who
value most that which is hardest to gain.

Betty with her rein on her horse's neck was thinking, wondering how it
was that John Johnstone was always present to her mind, that her eyes
sought him in the hunting-field, that those evenings were dull and
lonely on which he did not come in for a chat with her father before
supper-time, and all the world fell flat, stale and unprofitable, during
various short absences of his, when he would disappear for three days
together and none knew whither he went.

Betty's horse had mounted the white hill at last, and now scoured
swiftly away over the springy turf on the wide downs.

For miles she passed no human habitation, then Betty reached her
destination.

Low in a hollow dip of the green grass sea nestled a small cottage. No
tree or bush within miles, the unbroken winds tore round it, the snow
often banked up against it; but the owner, one of Mr. Ives' pensioners,
appeared to care little for win