Mrs. Carnegie wished she could have offered herself as Bessie’s companion, but she would have been an impediment rather than a help, and Bessie set out alone.  She had gone that way to Brook many and many a time, but never quite alone before.  It seemed, at first, strange to her to be walking across the open heath by herself, and yet she felt, somehow, as if it had all happened before—­perhaps in a dream.  It was a warm afternoon towards six o’clock, and the August glow of the heather in blossom spread everywhere like a purple sea.  At the gate of the Forest Farm the cows were gathered, with meek patience expecting their call to the milking-shed; but after she passed under the shade of the trees beyond Great-Ash Ford she met not a creature until she came in sight of the wicket opening into the wood from the manor-garden.  And there was Harry Musgrave himself.

Approaching over the turf with her light swift foot, Bessie drew quite near to him unheard, and saw him before he saw her.  He had seated himself on a fallen tree, and leant his head on his hand in an easy attitude; his countenance was abstracted rather than sad, and his eyes, fixed on the violet and amber of the sky in the west, were full of tranquil watching.  Bessie’s voice as she cried out his name was tremulous with joy, and her face as he turned and saw her was beautiful with the flush of young love’s delight.

“I was waiting for you.  I knew you would come, my dear, my dear!” was his greeting.  They went into the garden hand in hand, silent:  they looked at each other with assured happiness.  Harry said, “You are all in black, Bessie.”

“Yes, for poor grandpapa:  don’t you remember?  I will put it off to-morrow if you dislike it.”

“Put it off; I do dislike it:  you have worn it long enough.”  They directed their steps to their favorite seat under the beeches, but Mrs. Musgrave, restless since her son’s arrival, and ever on the watch, came down to them with a plea that they would avoid the damp ground and falling dew.  The ground was dry as dust, and the sun would not set yet for a good hour.

“There is the sitting-room if you want to be by yourselves,” she said plaintively.  “Perhaps you’ll be able to persuade Harry to show some sense, Bessie Fairfax, and feeling for his health:  he won’t listen to his mother.”

She followed them into the spacious old room, and would have shut the lattices because the curtains were gently flapping in the evening breeze, but Harry protested:  “Mother dear, let us have air—­it is life and pleasure to me.  After the sultry languor of town this is delicious.”

“There you go, Harry, perverse as ever!  He never could be made to mind a draught, Bessie; and though he has just been told that consumption is in the family, and carried off his uncle Walter—­every bit as fine a young man as himself—­he pays no heed.  He might as well have stopped on the farm from the beginning, if this was to be the end.  I am more mortified than tongue can tell.”