gift must be valued before it could be given or received. He also was to
give her as much, and she would accept it as being beyond all price. But
she would not allow that that which was offered to her was in any degree
the more precious because of his outward worldly standing.

She would not pretend to herself that she thought he would come to her
that afternoon, and therefore she busied herself in the kitchen and
about the house, giving directions to her two maids as though the day
would pass as all other days did pass in that household. They usually
dined at four, and she rarely, in these summer months, went far from the
house before that hour. At four precisely she sat down with her father,
and then said that she was going up as far as Helpholme after dinner.
Helpholme was a solitary farmhouse in another parish, on the border of
the moor, and Mr. Woolsworthy asked her whether he should accompany her.

'Do, papa,' she said, 'if you are not too tired.' And yet she had
thought how probable it might be that she should meet John Broughton on
her walk. And so it was arranged; but, just as dinner was over, Mr.
Woolsworthy remembered himself.

'Gracious me,' he said, 'how my memory is going! Gribbles, from
Ivybridge, and old John Poulter, from Bovey, are coming to meet here by
appointment. You can't put Helpholme off till tomorrow?'

Patience, however, never put off anything, and therefore at six o'clock,
when her father had finished his slender modicum of toddy, she tied on
her hat and went on her walk. She started forth with a quick step, and
left no word to say by which route she would go. As she passed up along
the little lane which led towards Oxney Colne she would not even look to
see if he was coming towards her; and when she left the road, passing
over a stone stile into a little path which ran first through the upland
fields, and then across the moor ground towards Helpholme, she did not
look back once, or listen for his coming step.

She paid her visit, remaining upwards of an hour with the old bedridden
mother of the farmer of Helpholme. 'God bless you, my darling!' said the
old lady as she left her; 'and send you someone to make your own path
bright and happy through the world.' These words were still ringing in
her ears with all their significance as she saw John Broughton waiting
for her at the first stile which she had to pass after leaving the
farmer's haggard.

'Patty,' he said, as he took her hand, and