She turned and rode up the hill again, and looking down, saw Stafford riding along the valley in desperate haste, and yet looking about him uncertainly.

Her heart beat with a quickened pulse, sending the delicate colour into her face, and she pulled up, and, leaning forward with her chin in her hand, watched him dreamily.
He rode a heavier horse than Adonis; and he had made a change in his dress; in place of the riding-suit, which had smacked of London and Hyde Park, he wore a rough but light coat, thick cord breeches, and brown leather gaiters.

She smiled as she knew that he had tried to make himself look as much like a farmer as possible; but no farmer in the dales had that peculiar air of birth and breeding which distinguished Stafford Orme; the air which his father had been so quick to detect and to be proud of.
She noticed how well he sat the great horse, with what ease and "hands" he rode over the rough and treacherous ground.

Suddenly he turned his head and saw her, and with a wave of his hand came galloping up to her, with a smile of relief and gladness on his handsome face, as he spoke to the dogs, who clamoured round him.
"I was so afraid I had missed you," he said.

"I am late, am I not?
Some people kept me after breakfast." "You are not late; I don't think any time was mentioned," she responded, quickly, though her heart was beating with a strange and novel sensation of pleasure in his presence.