It was about eleven o’clock when at last I tore myself away from this most attractive little family.  To live as they lived, to be interested in the things that interested them—­for the house seemed filled with books and pictures—­to love nature, to love each other, and to think well of their fellow-beings, even of the super-rich—­seemed to me to be an object for which a man of my temperament should be willing to strive and thankful to win.  After meeting her parents I did not wonder that I had thought the slender girl so honest-hearted and so lovable.  It was true that I had thought that.

CHAPTER V

THE LADY AND THE CAVALIER

The day was fine, and the landscape lay clean and sharply defined under the blue sky and white clouds.  I sped along in a cheerful mood, well pleased with what my good cycle had so far done for me.  Again I passed the open gate of the Putney estate, and glanced through it at the lodge.  I saw no one, and was glad of it—­better pleased, perhaps, than I could have given good reason for.  When I had gone on a few hundred yards I was suddenly startled by a voice—­a female voice.

“Well! well!” cried some one on my right, and turning, I saw, above a low wall, the head and shoulders of the young lady with the dark eyes with whom I had parted an hour or so before.  A broad hat shaded her face, her eyes were very dark and very wide open, and I saw some of her beautiful teeth, although she was not smiling or laughing.  It was plain that she had not come down there to see me pass; she was genuinely astonished; I dismounted and approached the wall.

[Illustration:  “I dismounted and approached the wall”]

“I thought you were miles and miles on your way!” said she.  It occurred to me that I had recently heard a remark very like this, and yet the words, as they came from the slender girl and from this one, seemed to have entirely different meanings.  She was desirous, earnestly desirous, to know how I came to be passing this place at this time, when I had left their gate so long before, and, as I was not unwilling to gratify her curiosity, I told her the whole story of the accident the day before, and of everything which had followed it.

“And you went all the way back,” she said, “to inquire after that Burton girl?”

“Do you know her?” I asked.

“No,” she said, “I do not know her; but I have seen her often, and I know all about her family.  They seem to be of such little consequence, one way or the other, that I can scarcely understand how things could so twist themselves that you should consider it necessary to go back there this morning before you really started on your day’s journey.”

I do not remember what I said, but it was something commonplace, no doubt, but I imagined I perceived a little pique in the young lady.  Of course I did not object to this, for nothing could be more flattering to a young man than the exhibition of such a feeling on an occasion such as this.