He came down upon Newhaven, and halted in the town for refreshment; then, having loitered a little to look at the shipping, he climbed the opposite side of the valley, and made his way as far as Seaford.  Thence another climb, and a bend inland, for the next indentation of the coast was Cuckmere Haven, and the water could only be crossed at some distance from the sea.  The country through which the Cuckmere flowed had a melancholy picturesqueness.  It was a great reach of level meadows, very marshy, with red-brown rushes growing in every ditch, and low trees in places, their trunks wrapped in bright yellow lichen; nor only their trunks, but the very smallest of their twigs was so clad.  All over the flats were cows pasturing, black cows, contrasting with flocks of white sheep, which were gathered together, bleating.  The coarse grass was sun-scorched; the slope of the Downs on either side showed the customary chalky green.  The mist had now all but dispersed, yet there was still only blurred sunshine.  Rooks hovered beneath the sky, heavily, lazily, and uttered their long caws.

The Cuckmere was crossed, and another ascent began.  The sea was now hidden; the road would run inland, cutting off the great angle made by Beachy Head.  The pedestrian had made notes of his track; he knew that he was now approaching a village called West Dean.  He had lingered by the Cuckmere; now he braced himself.  And he came in sight of West Dean as the church clock struck four.

He wished now to make speed to Eastbourne, but the loveliness of the hollow above which the road ran perforce checked him; he paced forward very slowly, his eyes bent upon the hamlet.  Something moved, near to him.  He looked round.  A lady was standing in the road, and, of all strange things, a lady of whom at that moment he was thinking.

‘By what inconceivable chance does this happen, Miss Newthorpe?’ he said, taking her offered hand.

‘Surely the question would come with even more force from me,’ Annabel made answer.  ’You might have presumed me to be in England, Mr. Egremont; I, on the other hand, certainly imagined that you were beyond the Atlantic.’

‘I have been in England a day or two.’

‘But here?  Looking down upon West Dean?’

’I have walked from Brighton—­one of the most delightful walks I ever took.’

’A long one, surely.  I am waiting for Mrs. Ormonde.  She is with the carriage below.  I chose to wait here, to feast my eyes.’

Both turned again to the picture.  The two did not sort ill together.  Annabel was very womanly, of fair, thoughtful countenance, and she stood with no less grace, though maturer, than by the ripples of Ullswater, four years ago.  She had the visage of a woman whose intellect is highly trained, a face sensitive to every note of the soul’s music, yet impressed with the sober consciousness which comes of self-study and experience.  A woman, one would have said, who could act as nobly as she could speak,