m still. Was it
possible to love and despise together? If he should come. . . .
She caught herself picturing their meeting. He would follow across
the fields in search of her. She would hear his footstep. Yet she
would not turn at once--he should not see how her heart leapt.
He would overtake her, call her by name. . . . She must not be proud:
just proud enough to let him see how deep the wrong had been.
But she would be humble too. . . .

She heard no footsteps. No voice called her. Unable to endure it
longer, she came to a standstill and looked back. Between her and
the parsonage buildings the wide fields were empty. She could see
the corner of the woodstack. No one stood there. Away to the left
two figures diminished by distance followed a footpath arm-in-arm--
John Lambert and Nancy.

A great blackness fell on her. She had no pride now; she turned and
went slowly back, not to the parsonage, but aslant by the bank of a
dyke leading to the highroad along which, a few hours ago, she had
returned so wearily. She must watch and discover what man it was who
had come with John Lambert.

Before she reached the low bridge by the road, she heard a tune
whistled and a man's footfall approaching--not _his_. She supposed
it to be one of the labourers, and in a sudden terror hid herself
behind an ash-bole on the brink.

The man went by, still whistling cheerfully. She peered around the
tree and watched him as he retreated--a broad-shouldered man,
swinging a cudgel. A hundred yards or less beyond her tree he
halted, with his back to her, in the middle of the road, and stayed
his whistling while he made two or three ludicrous cuts with his
cudgel at the empty air. This pantomime over, he resumed his way.

She recognised him by so much of his back as showed over the dwarf
hedge. It was William Wright.

Was it _he_, then, who had come with John Lambert? Hetty sat down by
the tree, and, with her eyes on the slow water in the dyke, began to
think.

To be sure, this man might have come to Wroote merely for his money.
Yet (as she firmly believed) it was he who had written the letter
which in effect had led to her running away. He might have used the
debt to-day as a pretext. His motive, she felt certain, was
curiosity to learn what his letter had brought about.

She bore him no grudge. He had fired the train--oh, no doubt!
But she was clear-sighted now, saw that the true fault after all was
hers, and wou