staying out so long have given Fritzing’s careful heart an unnecessary pang of anxiety.  He had had so many, and all because of her.  But then it had been the very first time in her life that she had ever walked alone, and if words cannot describe the joy and triumph of it how was it likely that she should have been able to resist the temptation to stray aside up a lovely little lane that lured her on and on from one bend to another till it left her at last high up, breathless and dazzled, on the edge of the heath, with Exmoor rolling far away in purple waves to the sunset and all the splendour of the evening sky in her face?  She had gone on, fascinated by the beauty of the place, and when she wanted to turn back found she had lost herself.  Then appeared Sir Augustus to set her right, and with a brief thought of him as a useful person on a nice horse she fell into sober meditations as to the probable amount of torture her poor Fritzi was going through, and Augustus ceased to exist for her as completely as a sign-post ceases to exist for him who has taken its advice and passed on.

He looked at her, and looked, and looked again.  He had never seen any one quite so beautiful, and certainly never any one with such an air of extreme detachment.  He was twenty-one and much inclined to poetry, and he thought as she walked beside him so tall and straight and aloof, with the nimbus of flaming hair and the noble little head and slightly stern brow that she looked like nothing less than a young saint of God.

Tussie was not bold like Robin.  He was a gentle youth who loved quiet things, quiet places, placid people, kind dogs, books, canaries even, if they did not sing too loud.  He was sensitive about himself, being small and weakly, and took, as I have said, great care of what he had of health, such care indeed that some of his robust friends called him Fussie.  He hated the idea of coming of age and of having a great deal of money and a great many active duties and responsibilities.  His dream was to be left in peace to write his verses; to get away into some sweet impossible wilderness, and sit there singing with as much of the spirit of Omar Kayyam as could reasonably be expected to descend on a youth who only drank water.  He was not bold, I say; and after that one quelling glance from the young saint’s eyes did not dare speak again for a long while.  But they were getting near Symford; they were halfway down the hill; he could not let her slip away perhaps suddenly from his side into the shadows without at least trying to find out where she was staying.  He looked at her soft kind mouth and opened his own to speak.  He looked at her stern level brows and shut it again.  At last, keeping his eyes on her mouth he blurted out, growing red, “I know every soul in Symford, and every soul for miles round, but I don’t know—­” He stopped.  He was going to say “you,” but he stopped.