f. She longed for solitude. She often walked up to the top of the hill,
to the purple moor over which she had ridden with Drake Vernon; and
there she would sit, recalling every word she had said, every tone of
his voice. She tried to forget him, but it was impossible.
One evening she walked up the hill slowly and thoughtfully, and seated
herself on a mossy bank, and gave herself up to that reverie in which we
dream dreams which are more of heaven than of earth.
Suddenly she heard the sound of footsteps. She looked up listlessly and
with a slight feeling of impatience, seeing that her reverie was
disturbed.
The footsteps came nearer, a tall figure appeared against the sunset.
She rose to her feet, trembling and filled with the hope that seemed to
her too wild for hope.
In another moment he was beside her. She rose, quivering in every nerve.
Was it only a dream, or was it he? He held her hand and looked down at
her with an expression in his eyes and face which made her tremble, and
yet which made her heart leap.
"Nell!" he said.
CHAPTER XII.
They stood and looked at each other in silence for a moment; but what a
silence!
It almost seemed to Nell as if it were not he himself who stood before
her, but just a vision of her imagination, called up by the intensity of
her thoughts of him. The color came and went in her face, leaving it, at
last, pale and startled. And he, too, stood, as incapable of speech as
any of the shy and bashful young fishermen on the quay; he, the man of
the world, who had faced so many "situations" with women--women of the
world armed with the weapons of experience, and the "higher culture." At
that moment, intense as it was, the strength of the emotion which swept
over him and mastered him, amazed him.
He knew, now that he was face to face with her, how he had missed this
girl, how keen and intolerable had been his longing for her.
He remembered to hold out his hand. Had he done so yet? For the life of
him, he could not have told. The sight of the sweet face had cast a
spell over him, and he did not know whether he was standing or sitting.
As she put her small hand in his, Nell recovered something of her
self-possession; but not all, for her heart was beating furiously, her
bosom heaving, and she was in agony lest he should see the mist of dew
which seemed to cover her eyes.
"I'm afraid I startled you," he said.
Nell smiled faintly, and drew her hand away--for he
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