For beside him now walked a man so strangely resembling him in height, in bearing and in build that, but for the difference of clothing and the bearded face, it might be himself had the clock of his life been set back by thirty years.
Damaris' first instinct was of flight.

Just as when, out on the Bar with her cousin, Tom Verity, now nearly a month ago, overcome by a foreboding of far-reaching danger she had--to the subsequent bitter wounding of her self-respect and pride--shown the white feather, ignominiously turned tail and run away, was she tempted to run away now.
For it seemed too much.

It came too close, laying rough hands not only upon the deepest of her love and reverence for her father, but upon that still mysterious depth of her own nature, namely her apprehension of passion and of sex.

A sacred shame, an awe as at the commission of some covert act of impiety, overcame her as she looked at the two men walking, side by side, across the moist vividly green carpet of turf in the chill white sunshine, the plain of an uneasy grey sea behind them.

She wanted to hide herself, to close eyes and ears against further knowledge.
Yes--it came too close; and at the same time made her feel, as never before, isolated and desolate--as though a great gulf yawned between her and what she had always counted pre-eminently her own, most securely her property because most beloved.
She had spoken valiantly on Faircloth's behalf, had generously acted as his advocate; yet now, beholding him thus in open converse with her father, the wings of love were scorched by the flame of jealousy--not so much of the young man himself, as of a past which he stood for and in which she had no part.