When she came into sight at last, he was soon walking beside her, leading his horse by the reins.

“I have been waiting to see you, Daphne,” he said, with a smile, but general air of seriousness.  “I have been waiting a long time for a chance to talk to you.”

“And I have wanted to see you,” said Daphne, her face turned away and her voice hardly to be heard.  “I have been waiting for a chance to talk to you.”

The change in her was so great, so unexpected, it contained an appeal to him so touching, that he glanced quickly at her.  Then he stopped short and looked searchingly around the meadow.

The thorn-tree is often the only one that can survive on these pasture lands.  Its spikes, even when it is no higher than the grass, keep off the mouths of grazing stock.  As it grows higher, birds see it standing solitary in the distance and fly to it, as a resting-place in passing.  Some autumn day a seed of the wild grape is thus dropped near its root; and in time the thorn-tree and the grape-vine come to thrive together.

As Hilary now looked for some shade to which they could retreat from the blinding, burning sunlight, he saw one of these standing off at a distance of a few hundred yards.  He slipped the bridle-reins through the head-stall, and giving his mare a soft slap on the shoulder, turned her loose to graze.

“Come over here and sit down out of the sun,” he said, starting off in his authoritative way.  “I want to talk to you.”

Daphne followed in his wake, through the deep grass.

When they reached the tree, they sat down under the rayless boughs.  Some sheep lying there ran round to the other side and stood watching them, with a frightened look in their clear, peaceful eyes.

“What’s the matter?” he said, fanning his face, and tugging with his forefinger to loosen his shirt collar from his moist neck.  He had the manner of a powerful comrade who means to succor a weaker one.

“Nothing,” said Daphne, like a true woman.

“Yes, but there is,” he insisted.  “I got you into trouble.  I didn’t think of that when I asked you to dance.”

“You had nothing to do with it,” retorted Daphne, with a flash.  “I danced for spite.”

He threw back his head with a peal of laughter.  All at once this was broken off.  He sat up, with his eyes fixed on the lower edge of the meadow.

“Here comes your father,” he said gravely.

Daphne turned.  Her father was riding slowly through the bars.  A wagon-bed loaded with rails crept slowly after him.

In an instant the things that had cost her so much toil and so many tears to arrange,—­her explanations, her justifications, and her parting,—­all the reserve and the coldness that she had laid up in her heart, as one fills high a little ice-house with fear of far-off summer heat,—­all were quite gone, melted away.  And everything that he had planned to tell her was forgotten also at the sight of that stern figure on horseback bearing unconsciously down upon them.