er, not
dramatically. On her accepting his offer to drive her down to the valley
to meet the coach, a genuine illumination of pure gratitude made a better
man of him, both to look at and in feeling. She did not hesitate to
consent; and he had half expected a refusal. She talked on the way quite
as usual, cheerfully, if not altogether so spiritedly. A flash of her
matchless wit now and then reduced him to that abject state of man beside
the fair person he has treated high cavalierly, which one craves
permission to describe as pulp. He was utterly beaten.

The sight of Redworth on the valley road was a relief to them both. He
had slept in one of the houses of the valley, and spoke of having had the
intention to mount to Copsley. Sir Lukin proposed to drive him back. He
glanced at Diana, still with that calculating abstract air of his; and he
was rallied. He confessed to being absorbed in railways, the new lines of
railways projected to thread the land and fast mapping it.

'You 've not embarked money in them?' said Sir Lukin.

The answer was: 'I have; all I possess.' And Redworth for a sharp instant
set his eyes on Diana, indifferent to Sir Lukin's bellow of stupefaction
at such gambling on the part of a prudent fellow.

He asked her where she was to be met, where written to, during the
Summer, in case of his wishing to send her news.

She replied: 'Copsley will be the surest. I am always in communication
with Lady Dunstane.' She coloured deeply. The recollection of the change
of her feeling for Copsley suffused her maiden mind.

The strange blush prompted an impulse in Redworth to speak to her at once
of his venture in railways. But what would she understand of them, as
connected with the mighty stake he was playing for? He delayed. The coach
came at a trot of the horses, admired by Sir Lukin, round a corner. She
entered it, her maid followed, the door banged, the horses trotted. She
was off.

Her destiny of the Crossways tied a knot, barred a gate, and pointed to a
new direction of the road on that fine spring morning, when beech-buds
were near the burst, cowslips yellowed the meadow-flats, and skylarks
quivered upward.

For many long years Redworth had in his memory, for a comment on
procrastination and excessive scrupulousness in his calculating faculty,
the blue back of a coach.

He declined the vacated place beside Sir Lukin, promising to come and
spend a couple of days at Copsley in a fortnight--Saturday