"I wanted my hat this morning," she went on. "I had to ride to
Tewnell Mill."

"Yes you had."

"How do you know?"

"I saw you."

"Where?" she inquired, a misgiving bringing every muscle of her
lineaments and frame to a standstill.

"Here--going through the plantation, and all down the hill," said
Farmer Oak, with an aspect excessively knowing with regard to some
matter in his mind, as he gazed at a remote point in the direction
named, and then turned back to meet his colloquist's eyes.

A perception caused him to withdraw his own eyes from hers as
suddenly as if he had been caught in a theft. Recollection of the
strange antics she had indulged in when passing through the trees was
succeeded in the girl by a nettled palpitation, and that by a hot
face. It was a time to see a woman redden who was not given to
reddening as a rule; not a point in the milkmaid but was of the
deepest rose-colour. From the Maiden's Blush, through all varieties
of the Provence down to the Crimson Tuscany, the countenance of Oak's
acquaintance quickly graduated; whereupon he, in considerateness,
turned away his head.

The sympathetic man still looked the other way, and wondered when she