shafts before him stretched the pillared aisles of Ashley Church! He
was riding as in a dream, and when a figure suddenly slipped across his
pathway from a column-like tree trunk, he woke with the disturbance and
sense of unreality of a dream. For he saw Lady Elfrida standing before
him!

It was not a mere memory conjured up by association, for although the
figure, face, and attitude were the same, there were certain changes
of costume which the eye of recollection noticed. In place of the smart
narrow-brimmed sailor hat he remembered, she was wearing a slouched
cavalry hat with a gold cord around its crown, that, with all its
becomingness and picturesque audacity, seemed to become characteristic
and respectable, as a crest to her refined head, and as historic as a
Lely canvas. She wore a flannel shirt, belted in at her slight waist
with a band of yellow leather, defining her small hips, and short
straight pleatless skirts that fell to her trim ankles and buckled
leather shoes. She was fresh and cool, wholesome and clean, free and
unfettered; indeed, her beauty seemed only an afterthought or accident.
So much so that when Peter saw her afterwards, amidst the billowy,
gauzy, and challenging graces of the officer's wives, who were dressed
in their best and prettiest frocks to welcome her, the eye turned
naturally from that suggestion of enhancement to the girl who seemed to
defy it. She was clearly not an idealized memory, a spirit or a ghost,
but naturalistic and rosy; he thought a trifle rosier, as she laughingly
addressed him:--

"I suppose it isn't quite fair to surprise you like that," she said,
with an honest girlish hand-shake, "for you see I know all about you
now, and what you are doing here, and even when you were expected; and
I dare say you thought we were still in England, if you remembered us