lf, on the firm ground. Short as the
interval was, it proved long enough to favor the escape of the fish. The
angler had heard my first instinctive cry of alarm, had turned, and had
thrown aside his rod to help me. We confronted each other for the
first time, I on the bank and he in the shallow water below. Our eyes
encountered, and I verily believe our hearts encountered at the same
moment. This I know for certain, we forgot our breeding as lady and
gentleman: we looked at each other in barbarous silence.

I was the first to recover myself. What did I say to him?

I said something about my not being hurt, and then something more,
urging him to run back and try if he might not yet recover the fish.

He went back unwillingly. He returned to me--of course without the fish.
Knowing how bitterly disappointed my uncle would have been in his place,
I apologized very earnestly. In my eagerness to make atonement, I even
offered to show him a spot where he might try again, lower down the
stream.

He would not hear of it; he entreated me to go home and change my wet
dress. I cared nothing for the wetting, but I obeyed him without knowing
why.

He walked with me. My way back to the Vicarage was his way back to the
inn. He had come to our parts, he told me, for the quiet and retirement
as much as for the fishing. He had noticed me once or twice from the
window of his room at the inn. He asked if I were not the vicar's
daughter.

I set him right. I told him that the vicar had married my mother's
sister, and that the two had been father and mother to me since the
death of my parents. He asked if he might venture to call on Doctor
Starkweather the next day, mentioning the name of a friend of his, with
whom he believed the vicar to be acquainted. I invited him to visit us,
as if it had been my house; I was spell-bound under his eyes and under
his voice. I had fancied, honestly fancied, myself to have been in love
often and often before this time. Never in any other man's company had
I felt as I now felt in the presence of _this_ man. Night seemed to fall
suddenly over the evening landscape when he left me. I leaned against
the Vicarage gate. I could not breathe, I could not think; my heart
fluttered as if it would fly out of my bosom--and all this for a
stranger! I burned with shame; but oh, in spite of it all, I was so
happy!

And now, when little more than a few weeks had passed since that first
meeting, I had him by my side