‘Query, how long will she wait for him (for it is a man to a certainty)?’ resumed the elder of the smokers, at the end of several minutes of silence, when, full of vacillation and doubt, she became lost to view behind some bushes.  ‘Will she reappear?’ The smoking went on, and up she came into open ground as before, and walked by.

’I wonder who the girl is, to come to such a place in this weather?  There she is again,’ said the young man called Ladywell.

’Some cottage lass, not yet old enough to make the most of the value set on her by her follower, small as that appears to be.  Now we may get an idea of the hour named by the fellow for the appointment, for, depend upon it, the time when she first came—­about five minutes ago—­was the time he should have been there.  It is now getting on towards five—­half-past four was doubtless the time mentioned.’

‘She’s not come o’ purpose:  ‘tis her way home from school every day,’ said the waterman.

’An experiment on woman’s endurance and patience under neglect.  Two to one against her staying a quarter of an hour.’

’The same odds against her not staying till five would be nearer probability.  What’s half-an-hour to a girl in love?’

’On a moorland in wet weather it is thirty perceptible minutes to any fireside man, woman, or beast in Christendom—­minutes that can be felt, like the Egyptian plague of darkness.  Now, little girl, go home:  he is not worth it.’

Twenty minutes passed, and the girl returned miserably to the hand-post, still to wander back to her retreat behind the sedge, and lead any chance comer from the opposite quarter to believe that she had not yet reached this ultimate point beyond which a meeting with Christopher was impossible.

’Now you’ll find that she means to wait the complete half-hour, and then off she goes with a broken heart.’

All three now looked through the hole to test the truth of the prognostication.  The hour of five completed itself on their watches; the girl again came forward.  And then the three in ambuscade could see her pull out her handkerchief and place it to her eyes.

’She’s grieving now because he has not come.  Poor little woman, what a brute he must be; for a broken heart in a woman means a broken vow in a man, as I infer from a thousand instances in experience, romance, and history.  Don’t open the door till she is gone, Ladywell; it will only disturb her.’

As they had guessed, the pupil-teacher, hearing the distant town-clock strike the hour, gave way to her fancy no longer, and launched into the diverging path.  This lingering for Christopher’s arrival had, as is known, been founded on nothing more of the nature of an assignation than lay in his regular walk along the plain at that time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of the six previous weeks.  It must be said that he was very far indeed from divining that his injudicious peace-offering of the flowers had stirred into life such a wearing, anxious, hopeful, despairing solicitude as this, which had been latent for some time during his constant meetings with the little stranger.