ich had disturbed him grew
fainter, he recognized in it the rustling of women's dresses. A few
paces ahead, the trench was crossed by a bridge (closed by a wicket
gate) which connected the garden with the park. He passed through the
gate, crossed the bridge, and, opening a door at the other end, found
himself in a summer-house thickly covered with creepers, and commanding
a full view of the garden from end to end.

He looked, and saw the figures of two ladies walking slowly away from
him toward the cottage. The shorter of the two failed to occupy his
attention for an instant; he never stopped to think whether she was
or was not the major's daughter. His eyes were riveted on the other
figure--the figure that moved over the garden walk with the long,
lightly falling dress and the easy, seductive grace. There, presented
exactly as he had seen her once already--there, with her back again
turned on him, was the Woman at the pool!

There was a chance that they might take another turn in the garden--a
turn back toward the summer-house. On that chance Midwinter waited. No
consciousness of the intrusion that he was committing had stopped him
at the door of the summer-house, and no consciousness of it troubled him
even now. Every finer sensibility in his nature, sinking under the cruel
laceration of the past night, had ceased to feel. The dogged resolution
to do what he had come to do was the one animating influence left alive
in him. He acted, he even looked, as the most stolid man living might
have acted and looked in his place. He was self-possessed enough, in the
interval of expectation before governess and pupil reached the end of
the walk, to open Mr. Brock's letter, and to fortify his memory by a
last look at the paragraph which described her face.

He was still absorbed over the description when he heard the smooth
rustle of the dresses traveling toward him again. Standing in the shadow
of the summer-house, he waited while she lessened the distance between
them. With her written portrait vividly impressed on his mind, and with
the clear light of the morning to help him, his eyes questioned her as
she came on; and these were the answers that her face gave him back.

The hair in the rector's description was light brown and not plentiful.
This woman's hair, superbly luxuriant in its growth, was of the one
unpardonably remarkable shade of color which the prejudice of the
Northern nations never entirely forgives--it was _re