ed it so purposely?

Romney silently opened the gate for her, silently latched it behind her,
and silently fell into step beside her. Down across a velvety sweep of
field they went; the air was frosty, calm and still; over the world lay
a haze of moonshine and mist that converted East Grafton's prosaic hills
and fields into a shimmering fairyland. At first Lucinda felt angrier
than ever. What a ridiculous situation! How the Penhallows would laugh
over it!

As for Romney, he, too, was angry with the trick impish chance had
played him. He liked being the butt of an awkward situation as little as
most men; and certainly to be obliged to walk home over moonlit fields
at one o'clock in the morning with the woman he had loved and never
spoken to for fifteen years was the irony of fate with a vengeance.
Would she think he had schemed for it? And how the deuce did she come to
be walking home from the wedding at all?

By the time they had crossed the field and reached the wild cherry lane
beyond it, Lucinda's anger was mastered by her saving sense of humour.
She was even smiling a little maliciously under her fascinator.

The lane was a place of enchantment--a long, moonlit colonnade adown
which beguiling wood nymphs might have footed it featly. The moonshine
fell through the arching boughs and made a mosaic of silver light and
clear-cut shadow for the unfriendly lovers to walk in. On either side
was the hovering gloom of the woods, and around them was a great silence
unstirred by wind or murmur.

Midway in the lane Lucinda was attacked by a sentimental recollection.
She thought of the last time Romney and she had walked home together
through this very lane, from a party at "young" John's. It had been
moonlight then too, and--Lucinda checked a sigh--they had walked hand
in hand. Just here, by the big gray beech, he had stopped her and kissed
her. Lucinda wondered if he were thinking of it, too, and stole a look
at him from under the lace border of her fascinator.

But he was striding moodily along with his hands in his pockets, and his
hat pulled down over his eyes, passing the old beech without a glance
at it. Lucinda checked another sigh, gathered up an escaped flutter of
voile, and marched on.

Past the lane a range of three silvery harvest fields sloped down to
Peter Penhallow's brook--a wide, shallow stream bridged over in the
olden days by the mossy trunk of an ancient fallen tree. When Lucinda
and Romney arrived a