In his withdrawal, at this particular date, Miss Felicia hailed a counsel of perfection which commanded, and continued to command, alike her enthusiastic approval and unfeigned regret.  For that he should so seasonably efface himself, argued—­in her opinion—­so delightful a nature, such nice thought for others, such chivalrous instincts and excellent good taste!—­All the more lamentable, then, effacement should be, from social, moral or other seasons, required.—­Yet for the family to gain knowledge of certain facts without due preparation—­how utterly disastrous!  Think of her half-sister, Harriet Cowden, for instance, with a full-grown and, alas! wrong-way-about, step-nephew bounced on her out of a clear sky, and on such an occasion too.—­The bare notion of what that formidable lady, not only might, but quite certainly would look and say turned Miss Felicia positively faint.—­No—­no, clearly it had to be—­it had to be—­or rather—­she became incoherent—­had not to be, if only for dearest Charles’s sake.  Yet what a ten thousand pities; for notwithstanding the plebeian origin on the mother’s side, didn’t Faircloth—­these reflections came later—­really surpass every male Verity present, young Tom included, though she confessed to a very soft spot in her heart for young Tom?—­Surpass them, just as her brother Charles had always surpassed them in good looks and charm as in inches, above all in his air of singular good-breeding?  And how extraordinarily he had transmitted this last to Faircloth, notwithstanding the—­well, the drawback, the obstacle to—­Miss Felicia did not finish the sentence, though in sentiment becoming sweetly abandoned.  For how she would have revelled, other things being equal—­which they so deplorably weren’t—­in shaking this singularly attractive nephew in the family’s collective face, just to show them what dearest Charles—­who they never had quite understood or appreciated—­could do in the matter of sons, when he once set about it, even against admittedly heavy odds!

As it was, she had to pacify her gentle extravagance by subjecting the said nephew’s hand to a long tremulous pressure at parting.—­He, worn, blanched, a little strange from the night’s lonely and very searching vigil; she patchily pink as to complexion, fluttered, her candid eyes red-lidded.—­Pacify herself by assuring him she could never express how deeply she had felt his unselfish devotion during this time of trouble—­felt his—­his perfect attitude towards her dearest brother—­his father—­or the consideration he had shown towards Damaris and herself.

“You can count on my unswerving affection, my dear Darcy,” she had said.  Adding with, to him, very touching humility—­“And any affection you have to give me in return I shall cherish most gratefully, be very sure of that.”

All which, as shall presently be shown, brings our narrative, though by devious courses, back to Damaris sweeping the dog-cart to the left across the bridge spanning the Arne, and on up the long winding ascent, from the woods and rich meadows in the valley to the wide prospects and keener air of the moorland above.