ve which the road ran perforce checked him; he paced forward
very slowly, his eyes bent upon the hamlet. Something moved, near to
him. He looked round. A lady was standing in the road, and, of all
strange things, a lady of whom at that moment he was thinking.

'By what inconceivable chance does this happen, Miss Newthorpe?' he
said, taking her offered hand.

'Surely the question would come with even more force from me,' Annabel
made answer. 'You might have presumed me to be in England, Mr.
Egremont; I, on the other hand, certainly imagined that you were beyond
the Atlantic.'

'I have been in England a day or two.'

'But here? Looking down upon West Dean?'

'I have walked from Brighton--one of the most delightful walks I ever
took.'

'A long one, surely. I am waiting for Mrs. Ormonde. She is with the
carriage below. I chose to wait here, to feast my eyes.'

Both turned again to the picture. The two did not sort ill together.
Annabel was very womanly, of fair, thoughtful countenance, and she
stood with no less grace, though maturer, than by the ripples of
Ullswater, four years ago. She had the visage of a woman whose
intellect is highly trained, a face sensitive to every note of the
soul's music, yet impressed with the sober consciousness which comes of
self-study and experience. A woman, one would have said, who could act
as nobly as she could speak, yet who would prefer both to live and to
express herself in a minor key. And Egremont was not unlike her in some
essential points. The turn for irony was more pronounced on his
features, yet he had the eyes of an idealist. He, too, would choose
restraint in preference to outbreak of emotion: he too could be
forcible if occasion of sufficient pressure lay upon him. And the
probability remained, that both one and the other would choose a path
of life where there was small risk of their stronger faculties being
demanded.

They talked of the landscape, of that exclusively, until Mrs. Ormonde's
carriage was seen reascending the hill. Then they became silent, and
stood so as their common friend drew near. Her astonishment was not
slight, but she gave it only momentary expression, then passed on to
general talk.

'I always regard you as reasonably emancipated, Annabel,' she said,
'but none the less I felt a certain surprise in noticing you intimately
conversing with a chance wayfarer. Mr. Egremont, be good enough to seat
yourself opposite to us.'

They drove back to E