She would not, as Helena did, despise the rural simplicities of a farmer's fireside.

Moreover, she had a pre-eminent qualification for Darton's household; no other woman could make so desirable a mother to her brother's two children and Darton's one as Sally--while Darton, now that Helena had gone, was a more promising husband for Sally than he had ever been when liable to reminders from an uncured sentimental wound.
Darton was not a man to act rapidly, and the working out of his reparative designs might have been delayed for some time.

But there came a winter evening precisely like the one which had darkened over that former ride to Hintock, and he asked himself why he should postpone longer, when the very landscape called for a repetition of that attempt.
He told his man to saddle the mare, booted and spurred himself with a younger horseman's nicety, kissed the two youngest children, and rode off.

To make the journey a complete parallel to the first, he would fain have had his old acquaintance Japheth Johns with him.

But Johns, alas! was missing.