xing the rein, still stood
gazing at her over his horse's back. That placid quadruped, whose years
had been spent in these pleasant by-ways and were too many to warrant an
exhibition of coltish surprise, promptly lowered his head and resumed
his occupation of grass-nibbling, making a little crunching noise which
Miss Renwick might have heard, but apparently did not. She was singing
very softly to herself,--

"Daisy, tell my fortune, pray:
He loves me not,--he loves me."

And still Armitage stood and gazed, while she, absorbed in her pleasant
task, still pulled and plucked at the golden-rod. In all his life no
"vision of fair women" had been to him fair and sacred and exquisite as
this. Down to the tip of her arched and slender foot, peeping from
beneath the broidered hem of her snowy skirt, she stood the lady born
and bred, and his eyes looked on and worshipped her,--worshipped, yet
questioned, Why came she here? Absorbed, he released his hold on the
rein, and Dobbin, nothing loath, reached with his long, lean neck for
further herbage, and stepped in among the trees. Still stood his
negligent master, fascinated in his study of the lovely, graceful girl.
Again she raised her head and looked northward along the winding, shaded
wood-path. A few yards away were other great clusters of the wild
flowers she loved, more sun-kissed golden-rod, and, with a little murmur
of delight, gathering her dainty skirts in one hand, she flitted up the
pathway like an unconscious humming-bird garnering the sweets from every
blossom. A little farther on the pathway bent among the trees, and she
would be hidden from his sight; but still he stood and studied her
every movement, drank in the soft, cooing melody of her voice as she
sang, and then there came a sweet, solemn strain from the brown, sunlit
walls just visible through the trees, and reverent voices and the
resonant chords of the organ thrilled through the listening woods the
glorious anthem of the church militant.

At the first notes she lifted up her queenly head and stood, listening
and appreciative. Then he saw her rounded throat swelling like a bird's,
and the rich, full tones of her voice rang out through the welcoming
sunshine, and the fluttering wrens, and proud red-breasted robins, and
rival song-queens, the brown-winged thrushes,--even the impudent
shrieking jays,--seemed to hush and listen. Dobbin, fairly astonished,
lifted up his hollow-eyed head and looked amazedly