ambition.  Now it was the idyllic beauty that took possession of him, transformed as it was by the presence of a woman, that supreme interpreter of nature to a youth.  And yet scarcely a woman—­rather a vision of a girl, impressible still to all the influences of such a scene and to the most delicate suggestions of unfolding life.  Probably he did not analyze this feeling, but it was Evelyn he was thinking of when he admired the landscape, breathed with exhilaration the fresh air, and watched the white clouds sail along the blue vault; and he knew that if she were suddenly to leave the valley all the light would go out of it and the scene would be flat to his eyes and torturing to his memory.

Mrs. Mavick he encountered continually in the village.  He had taken many little strolls with her to this or that pretty point of view, they had exchanged reminiscences of foreign travel, and had dipped a little into current popular books, so that they had come to be on easy, friendly terms.  Philip’s courtesy and deference, and a certain wit and humor of suggestion applied to ordinary things, put him more and more on a good footing with her, so much so that she declared to McDonald that really young Burnett was a genuine “find” in the country.

It seems a pity that the important events in our lives are so commonplace.  Philip’s meeting with Evelyn, so long thought of and dramatized in his mind, was not in the least as he had imagined it.  When one morning he went to the Peacock Inn at the summons of Mrs. Mavick, in order to lay out a plan of campaign, he found Evelyn and her governess seated on the veranda, with their books.  It was Evelyn who rose first and came forward, without, so far as Philip could see, the least embarrassment of recognition.

“Mr. Burnett?  Mamma will be here in a moment.  This is our friend, Miss McDonald.”

The girl’s morning costume was very simple, and in her short walking-skirt she seemed younger even than in the city.  She spoke and moved—­Philip noticed that—­without the least self-consciousness, and she had a way of looking her interlocutor frankly in the eyes, or, as Philip expressed it, “flashing” upon him.

Philip bowed to the governess, and, still standing and waving his hand towards the river, hoped they liked Rivervale, and then added: 

“I see you can read in the country.”

“We pretend to,” said Evelyn, who had resumed her seat and indicated a chair for Philip, “but the singing of that river, and the bobolinks in the meadow, and the light on the hills are almost too much for us.  Don’t you think, McDonald, it is like Scotland?”

“It would be,” the governess replied, “if it rained when it didn’t mist, and there were moors and heather, and—­”

“Oh, I didn’t mean all that, but a feeling like that, sweet and retired and sort of lonesome?”

“Perhaps Miss McDonald means,” said Philip, “that there isn’t much to feel here except what you see.”