es turned away.

He had walked half a mile further, and reached the lonnin that led to
the Ghyll, when he was almost overrun by Greta Lowther, who came
tripping out of the gate of a meadow, her bonnet swinging over her arm,
her soft, wavy hair floating over her white forehead, her cheeks colored
with a warm glow, a roguish light in her eyes, and laughter on the point
of bubbling out of her lips.

Greta had just given Paul Ritson the slip. There was a thicket in the
field she had crossed, and it was covered with wild roses, white and
red. Through the heart of it there rippled a tiny streak of water that
was amber-tinted from the round shingle in its bed. The trunk of an old
beech lay across it for ford or bridge. Underfoot were the sedge and
moss; overhead the thick boughs and the roses; in the air, the odor of
hay and the songs of birds. And Paul, the cunning rascal, would have
tempted Greta into this solitude; but she was too shrewd, the wise
little woman, to-be so easily trapped. Pretending to follow him in
ignorance of his manifest design, she tripped back on tiptoe, and fled
away like a lapwing over the noiseless grass.

When Greta met Hugh Ritson she was saying to herself, of Paul in
particular, and of his sex in general: "What dear, simple, unsuspecting,
trustful creatures they are!" Then she drew up sharply, "Ah, Hugh!"

"How happy you look, Greta!" he said, fixing his eyes upon her.

A new light brightened her sunny face. "Not happier than I feel," she
answered. She swung the arm over which the bonnet hung; the heaving of
her breast showed the mold of her early womanhood.

Hugh Ritson's mind had for the last half hour brooded over many a good
purpose, but not one of them was now left.

"You witnessed a painful scene to-day," he said, with some hesitation.
"Be sure it was no less painful to me because you were there to see it."

"Oh, I was so sorry," said Greta, impetuously. "You mean with your
father?"

Hugh bent his head slightly. "It was inevitable--I know that full
well--but for my share in it I ask your pardon."

"That is nothing," she said; "but you took your father too seriously."

"I took him at his word--that was all."

"But the dear old man meant nothing, and you meant very much. He only
wanted to abuse you a little, and perhaps frighten you, and shake his
stick at you, and then love you all the better for it."

"You may be right, Greta. Among the whims of nature there is that of
making s