dwinter
was still hesitating, one of the grooms passed him on the drive below.
The man proved, on being questioned, to be better informed about his
master's movements than the servants indoors. He had seen Allan pass the
stables more than an hour since, going out by the back way into the park
with a nosegay in his hand.

A nosegay in his hand? The nosegay hung incomprehensibly on Midwinter's
mind as he walked round, on the chance of meeting Allan, to the back
of the house. "What does the nosegay mean?" he asked himself, with an
unintelligible sense of irritation, and a petulant kick at a stone that
stood in his way.

It meant that Allan had been following his impulses as usual. The one
pleasant impression left on his mind after his interview with
Pedgift Senior was the impression made by the lawyer's account of his
conversation with Neelie in the park. The anxiety that he should not
misjudge her, which the major's daughter had so earnestly expressed,
placed her before Allan's eyes in an irresistibly attractive
character--the character of the one person among all his neighbors who
had some respect still left for his good opinion. Acutely sensible
of his social isolation, now that there was no Midwinter to keep him
company in the empty house, hungering and thirsting in his solitude
for a kind word and a friendly look, he began to think more and more
regretfully and more and more longingly of the bright young face so
pleasantly associated with his first happiest days at Thorpe Ambrose.
To be conscious of such a feeling as this was, with a character like
Allan's, to act on it headlong, lead him where it might. He had gone
out on the previous morning to look for Neelie with a peace-offering of
flowers, but with no very distinct idea of what he should say to her if
they met; and failing to find her on the scene of her customary walks,
he had characteristically persisted the next morning in making a second
attempt with another peace-offering on a larger scale. Still ignorant
of his friend's return, he was now at some distance from the house,
searching the park in a direction which he had not tried yet.

After walking out a few hundred yards beyond the stables, and failing
to discover any signs of Allan, Midwinter retraced his steps, and waited
for his friend's return, pacing slowly to and fro on the little strip of
garden ground at the back of the house.

From time to time, as he passed it, he looked in absently at the roo