Meantime Lucy put her head in her hands and blushed, though she was all alone.  “How dare he forget the distance between us?  Poor fellow! have not I at times forgotten it?  I am worse than he.  I lost my self-possession; I should have checked his folly; he knows nothing of les convenances. He has hurt my hand, he is so rough; I feel his clutch now; there, I thought so, it is all red—­poor fellow!  Nonsense! he is a sailor; he knows nothing of the world and its customs.  Parting with a pleasant acquaintance forever made him a little sad.

“He is all nature; he is like nobody else; he shows every feeling instead of concealing it, that is all.  He has gone home, I hope.”  She glanced hastily back.  He was sitting on the stones, his arms drooping, his head bowed, a picture of despondency.  She put her face in her hands again and pondered, blushing higher and higher.  Then the pale face that had always been ruddy before, the simple grief and agitation, the manly eye that did not know how to weep, but was so clouded and troubled, and wildly sad; the shaking hands, that had clutched hers like a drowning man’s (she felt them still), the quivering features, choked voice, and trembling lip, all these recoiled with double force upon her mind:  they touched her far more than sobs and tears would have done, her sex’s ready signs of shallow grief.

Two tears stole down her cheeks.

“If he would but go home and forget me!” She glanced hastily back.  David was climbing up a tree, active as a cat.  “He is like nobody else—­he! he!  Stay! is that to see the last of me—­the very last?  Poor soul!  Madman, how will this end?  What can come of it but misery to him, remorse to me?

“This is love.”  She half closed her eyes and smiled, repeating, “This is love.

“Oh how I despise all the others and their feeble flatteries!”

“Heaven forgive me my mad, my wicked wish!

“I am beloved.

“I am adored.

“I am miserable!”

As soon as the carriage was out of sight, David came down and hurried from the place.  He found the pony at the inn.  The ostler had not even removed his saddle.

“Methought that ostler did protest too much.”

David kissed the saddle and the pommels, and the bridle her hand had held, and led the pony out.  After walking a mile or two he mounted the pony, to sit in her seat, not for ease.  Walking thirty miles was nothing to this athlete; sticking on and holding on with his chin on his knee was rather fatiguing.

Meantime, Eve walked on till she was four miles from home.  No David.  She sat down and cried a little space, then on again.  She had just reached an angle in the road, when—­clatter, clatter—­David came cantering around with his knee in his mouth.  Eve gave a joyful scream, and up went both her hands with sudden delight.  At the double shock to his senses the pony thought his end was come, and perhaps