He asked her where she was to be met, where written to, during the Summer, in case of his wishing to send her news.

She replied:  ’Copsley will be the surest.  I am always in communication with Lady Dunstane.’  She coloured deeply.  The recollection of the change of her feeling for Copsley suffused her maiden mind.

The strange blush prompted an impulse in Redworth to speak to her at once of his venture in railways.  But what would she understand of them, as connected with the mighty stake he was playing for?  He delayed.  The coach came at a trot of the horses, admired by Sir Lukin, round a corner.  She entered it, her maid followed, the door banged, the horses trotted.  She was off.

Her destiny of the Crossways tied a knot, barred a gate, and pointed to a new direction of the road on that fine spring morning, when beech-buds were near the burst, cowslips yellowed the meadow-flats, and skylarks quivered upward.

For many long years Redworth had in his memory, for a comment on procrastination and excessive scrupulousness in his calculating faculty, the blue back of a coach.

He declined the vacated place beside Sir Lukin, promising to come and spend a couple of days at Copsley in a fortnight—­Saturday week.  He wanted, he said, to have a talk with Lady Dunstane.  Evidently he had railways on the brain, and Sir Lukin warned his wife to be guarded against the speculative mania, and advise the man, if she could.

CHAPTER V

CONCERNING THE SCRUPULOUS GENTLEMAN WHO CAME TOO LATE

On the Saturday of his appointment Redworth arrived at Copsley, with a shade deeper of the calculating look under his thick brows, habitual to him latterly.  He found Lady Dunstane at her desk, pen in hand, the paper untouched; and there was an appearance of trouble about her somewhat resembling his own, as he would have observed, had he been open-minded enough to notice anything, except that she was writing a letter.  He begged her to continue it; he proposed to read a book till she was at leisure.

‘I have to write, and scarcely know how,’ said she, clearing her face to make the guest at home, and taking a chair by the fire, ’I would rather chat for half an hour.’

She spoke of the weather, frosty, but tonic; bad for the last days of hunting, good for the farmer and the country, let us hope.

Redworth nodded assent.  It might be surmised that he was brooding over those railways, in which he had embarked his fortune.  Ah! those railways!  She was not long coming to the wailful exclamation upon them, both to express her personal sorrow at the disfigurement of our dear England, and lead to a little, modest, offering of a woman’s counsel to the rash adventurer; for thus could she serviceably put aside her perplexity awhile.  Those railways!  When would there be peace in the land?  Where one single nook of shelter and escape from them!  And