e, ere she gets
home--She sometimes suffers her pony to go at will along the lane, as
slow as Betty Foy's."

"Ah, but then," said little Miss Digges, "Miss Mowbray sometimes gallops
as if the lark was a snail to her pony--and it quite frights one to see
her."

The Doctor touched Mrs. Blower, who had approached so as to be on the
verge of the genteel circle, though she did not venture within it--they
exchanged sagacious looks, and a most pitiful shake of the head.
Mowbray's eye happened at that moment to glance on them; and doubtless,
notwithstanding their hasting to compose their countenances to a
different expression, he comprehended what was passing through their
minds;--and perhaps it awoke a corresponding note in his own. He took
his hat, and with a cast of thought upon his countenance which it seldom
wore, left the apartment. A moment afterwards his horse's feet were
heard spurning the pavement, as he started off at a sharp pace.

"There is something singular about these Mowbrays to-night," said Lady
Penelope.--"Clara, poor dear angel, is always particular; but I should
have thought Mowbray had too much worldly wisdom to be fanciful.--What
are you consulting your _souvenir_ for with such attention, my dear Lady
Binks?"

"Only for the age of the moon," said her ladyship, putting the little
tortoise-shell-bound calendar into her reticule; and having done so, she
proceeded to assist Lady Penelope in the arrangements for the evening.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER IX.

THE MEETING.

We meet as shadows in the land of dreams,
Which speak not but in signs.

_Anonymous._

Behind one of the old oaks which we have described in the preceding
chapter, shrouding himself from observation like a hunter watching for
his game, or an Indian for his enemy, but with different, very different
purpose, Tyrrel lay on his breast near the Buck-stane, his eye on the
horse-road which winded down the valley, and his ear alertly awake to
every sound which mingled with the passing breeze, or with the ripple of
the brook.

"To have met her in yonder congregated assembly of brutes and
fools"--such was a part of his internal reflections,--"had been little
less than an act of madness--madness almost equal in its degree to that
cowardice which has hitherto prevented my approaching her, when our
eventful meeting might have taken place unobserved.--But now--now--my
resolution is as fixed as the place is itself favourable. I w