He crossed the road at the end of the squire’s property, where the parish of Allington divides itself from that of Abbot’s Guest in which the earl’s house stands, and made his way back along the copse which skirted the field in which they had encountered the bull, into the high woods which were at the back of the park.  Ah, yes; it had been well for him that he had not come out on horseback.  That ride home along the high road and up to the Manor House stables would, under his present circumstances, have been almost impossible to him.  As it was, he did not think it possible that he should return to his place in the earl’s house.  How could he pretend to maintain his ordinary demeanour under the eyes of those two old men?  It would be better for him to get home to his mother,—­to send a message from thence to the Manor, and then to escape back to London.  So thinking, but with no resolution made, he went on through the woods, and down from the hill back towards the town till he again came to the little bridge over the brook.  There he stopped and stood a while with his broad hand spread over the letters which he had cut in those early days, so as to hide them from his sight.  “What an ass I have been,—­always and ever!” he said to himself.

It was not only of his late disappointment that he was thinking, but of his whole past life.  He was conscious of his hobbledehoyhood,—­of that backwardness on his part in assuming manhood which had rendered him incapable of making himself acceptable to Lily before she had fallen into the clutches of Crosbie.  As he thought of this he declared to himself that if he could meet Crosbie again he would again thrash him,—­that he would so belabour him as to send him out of the world, if such sending might possibly be done by fair beating, regardless whether he himself might be called upon to follow him.  Was it not hard that for the two of them,—­for Lily and for him also,—­there should be such punishment because of the insincerity of that man?  When he had thus stood upon the bridge for some quarter of an hour, he took out his knife, and, with deep rough gashes in the wood, cut out Lily’s name from the rail.

He had hardly finished, and was still looking at the chips as they were being carried away by the stream, when a gentle step came close up to him, and turning round, he saw that Lady Julia was on the bridge.  She was close to him, and had already seen his handiwork.  “Has she offended you, John?” she said.

“Oh, Lady Julia!”

“Has she offended you?”

“She has refused me, and it is all over.”

“It may be that she has refused you, and that yet it need not be all over.  I am sorry that you have cut out the name.  John.  Do you mean to cut it out from your heart?”

“Never.  I would if I could, but I never shall.”

“Keep to it as to a great treasure.  It will be a joy to you in after years, and not a sorrow.  To have loved truly, even though you shall have loved in vain, will be a consolation when you are as old as I am.  It is something to have had a heart.”