It was all that she could do not to cry out.
But when at last Robin made a movement and she had to look him in the
face, what she saw there braced and strengthened her.
"You are right, Mistress Marjorie," he said both gravely and kindly. "I
will bid you good-day and be getting to my horse."
He kissed her gently, as the manner was, and went down the path alone.
PART II
CHAPTER I
I
It was with a sudden leap of her heart that Marjorie, looking out of her
window at the late autumn landscape, her mind still running on the sheet
of paper that lay before her, saw a capped head, and then a horse's
crest, rise over the broken edge of land up which Robin had ridden so
often two and three years ago. Then she saw who was the rider, and laid
her pen down again.
* * * * *
It was two years since the lad had gone to Rheims, and it would be five
years more, she knew (since he was not over quick at his books), before
he would return a priest. She had letters from him: one would come now
and again, a month or two sometimes after the date of writing. It was
only in September that she had had the letter which he had written her
on hearing of her father's death, and Mr. Manners had died in June. She
had written back to him then, a discreet and modest letter enough,
telling him of how Mr. Simpson had read mass over the body before it was
taken down to Derby for the burying; and telling him, too, of her
mother's rheumatics that kept her abed now three parts of the year.
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