"How do you know whom I love, or how eager I might be to see them?
There is an old woman there whom I love, and I have thought nothing of
this walk with the object of seeing her." And now, slowly drawing her
hand away from him, she pointed to the farmhouse which she had left.

"Patty," he said, after a minute's pause, during which she had looked
full into his face with all the force of her bright eyes; "I have come
from London to-day, straight down here to Oxney, and from my aunt's
house close upon your footsteps after you, to ask you that one
question--Do you love me?"

"What a Hercules!" she said, again laughing. "Do you really mean that
you left London only this morning? Why, you must have been five hours
in a railway carriage and two in a postchaise, not to talk of the walk
afterwards. You ought to take more care of yourself, Captain
Broughton!"

He would have been angry with her--for he did not like to be quizzed--
had she not put her hand on his arm as she spoke, and the softness of
her touch had redeemed the offence of her words.

"All that I have done," said he, "that I may hear one word from you."

"That any word of mine should have such potency! But let us walk on,
or my father will take us for some of the standing stones of the moor.
How have you found your aunt? If you only knew the cares that have sat
on her dear shoulders for the last week past, in order that your high
mightiness might have a sufficiency to eat and drink in these desolate
half-starved regions!"