While Robin was plotting, and his mother was plotting, that the next day would certainly see them inside Baker’s, a third person was trying to do exactly the same thing at Symford Hall; and this third person was no other than Augustus, the hope of all the Shuttleworths.  Augustus—­he was known to his friends briefly as Tussie—­had been riding homewards late that afternoon, very slowly, for he was an anxious young man who spent much of his time dodging things like being overheated, when he saw a female figure walking towards him along the lonely road.  He was up on the heath above Symford, a solitary place of heather, and gorse bushes, and winding roads that lead with many hesitations and delays to different parts of Exmoor, and he himself with his back to that wild region and the sunset was going, as every sensible person would be going at that time of the evening, in the direction of the village and home.  But where could the girl be going?  For he now saw it was a girl, and in a minute or two more that it was a beautiful girl.  With the golden glow of the sky the sun had just left on her face Priscilla came towards him out of the gathering dusk of approaching evening, and Tussie, who had a poetic soul, gazed at the vision openmouthed.  Seeing him, she quickened her steps, and he took off his cap eagerly when she asked him to tell her where Symford was.  “I’ve lost it,” she said, looking up at him.

“I’m going through it myself,” he answered.  “Will you let me show you the way?”

“Thank you,” said Priscilla; and he got off his horse and she turned and walked beside him with the same unruffled indifference with which she would have walked beside the Countess Disthal or in front of an attending lacquey.  Nor did she speak, for she was busy thinking of Fritzing and hoping he was not being too anxious about her, and Tussie (God defend his innocence) thought she was shy.  So sure was he as the minutes past that her silence was an embarrassed one that he put an end to it by remarking on the beauty of the evening, and Priscilla who had entirely forgotten Miss Schultz gave him the iciest look as a reminder that it was not his place to speak first.  It was lost on Tussie as a reminder, for naturally it did not remind him of anything, and he put it down at first to the girl’s being ill at ease alone up there with a strange man, and perhaps to her feeling she had better keep him at arm’s length.  A glance at her profile however dispelled this illusion once and for ever, for never was profile of a profounder calm.  She was walking now with her face in shadow, and the glow behind her played strange and glorious tricks with her hair.  He looked at her, and looked, and not by the quiver of an eyelash did she show she was aware of anybody’s presence.  Her eyes were fixed on the ground, and she was deep in thought tinged with remorsefulness that she should have come up here instead of going straight home to the farm, and by losing her way and