.

It was an unexpected meeting; and strange and startling consequences
soon followed.

CHAPTER IV.

AN INTERESTING TETE-A-TETE.

"Where have you been, Leone?" asks Farmer Noel.

She had begun a new life. It seemed years since she had left him, while
he sat in the same place, smoking the same pipe, probably thinking the
same thoughts. She came in with the brightness and light of the moon in
her face; dew-drops lay on her dark hair, her beautiful face was flushed
with the wind, so fair, so gracious, so royal, so brilliant. He looked
at her in helpless surprise.

"Where have you been?" he repeated.

She looked at him with a sweet, dreamy smile.

"I have been to the mill-stream." And she added in a lower tone, "I have
been to heaven."

It had been heaven to her--this one hour spent with one refined by
nature and by habit--a gentleman, a man of taste and education. Her
uncle wondered that evening at the light that came on her face, at the
cheerful sound of her voice, the smile that came over her lips. She was
usually so restless and discontented.

It was a break in her life. She wanted something to interrupt the
monotony, and now it had come. She had seen and spoken to not only a
very handsome and distinguished man, but a lord, the son of an earl. He
had admired her, said her face was like a poem; and the words brought a
sweet, musing smile to her face.

When the sun shone in her room the next morning she awoke with a sense
of something new and beautiful in her life; it was a pleasure to hear
the birds sing; a pleasure to bathe in the clear, cold, fresh water; a
pleasure to breathe the sweet, fragrant morning air. There was a half
wonder as to whether she could see him again.

The poetical, dramatic instinct of the girl was all awake; she tried to
make herself as pretty as she could. She put on a dress of pale pink--a
plain print, it is true, but the beautiful head and face rose from it as
a flower from its leaves.

She brushed back the rippling hair and placed a crimson rose in its
depths. Then she smiled at herself. Was it likely she should see him?
What should bring the great son of an earl to the little farm at
Rashleigh? But the blue and white pigeons, the little chickens--all
fared well that morning. Leone was content.

In the afternoon Farmer Noel wanted her to go down to the hay-fields.
The men were busy with the newly mown hay, and he wished her to take
some messages about the stacking of