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“I am sure that father will be very glad to see you, Mr. Mason. You must come in and have a glass of milk.”

“No, thank you, Miss Foster, I should very much prefer to stay out here with you. But I am afraid that I have interrupted you in a chat. Was not that Mr. Adam Wilson who left you this moment?” His manner was subdued, but his questioning eyes and compressed lips told of a deeper and more furious jealousy than that of his rival.

“Yes. It was Mr. Adam Wilson.” There was something about Mason, a certain concentration of manner, which made it impossible for the girl to treat him lightly as she had done the other.

“I have noticed him here several times lately.”

“Yes. He is head foreman, you know, at the big quarry.”

“Oh, indeed. He is fond of your society, Miss Foster. I can’t blame him for that, can I, since I am equally so myself. But I should like to come to some understanding with you. You cannot have misunderstood what my feelings are to you? I am in a position to offer you a comfortable home. Will you be my wife, Miss Foster?”

Dolly would have liked to make some jesting reply, but it was hard to be funny with those two eager, fiery eyes fixed so intently upon her own. She began to walk slowly towards the house, while he paced along beside her, still waiting for his answer.

“You must give me a little time, Mr. Mason,” she said at last. “‘Marry in haste,’ they say, ‘and repent at leisure.'”

“But you shall never have cause to repent.”

“I don’t know. One hears such things.”

“You shall be the happiest woman in England.”

“That sounds very nice. You are a poet, Mr. Mason, are you not?”

“I am a lover of poetry.”

“And poets are fond of flowers?”

“I am very fond of flowers.”

“Then perhaps you know something of these?” She took out the humble little sprig, and held it out to him with an arch questioning glance. He took it and pressed it to his lips.

“I know that it has been near you, where I should wish to be,” said he.

“Good evening, Mr. Mason!” It was Mrs. Foster who had come out to meet them. “Where’s Mr.—-? Oh–ah! Yes, of course. The teapot’s on the table, and you’d best come in afore it’s over-drawn.”

When Elias Mason left the farmhouse that evening, he drew Dolly aside at the door.

“I won’t be able to come before Saturday,” said he.

“We shall be glad to see you, Mr. Mason.”

“I shall want my answer then.”

“Oh, I cannot give any promise, you know.”

“But I shall live in hope.”

“Well, no one can prevent you from doing that.” As she came to realize her power over him she had lost something of her fear, and could answer him now nearly as freely as if he were simple Adam Wilson.

She stood at the door, leaning against the wooden porch, with the long trailers of the honeysuckle framing her tall, slight figure. The great red sun was low in the west, its upper rim peeping over the low hills, shooting long, dark shadows from the beech-tree in the field, from the little group of tawny cows, and from the man who walked away from her. She smiled to see how immense the legs were, and how tiny the body in the great flat giant which kept pace beside him. In front of her in the little garden the bees droned, a belated butterfly or an early moth fluttered slowly over the flower-beds, a thousand little creatures buzzed and hummed, all busy working out their tiny destinies, as she, too, was working out hers, and each doubtless looking upon their own as the central point of the universe. A few months for the gnat, a few years for the girl, but each was happy now in the heavy summer air. A beetle scuttled out upon the gravel path and bored onwards, its six legs all working hard, butting up against stones, upsetting itself on ridges, but still gathering itself up and rushing onwards to some all-important appointment somewhere in the grass plot. A bat fluttered up from behind the beech-tree. A breath of night air sighed softly over the hillside with a little tinge of the chill sea spray in its coolness. Dolly Foster shivered, and had turned to go in when her mother came out from the passage.