"Women are absurd about food," exclaimed Dyce, with laughing
impatience. "Most of you systematically starve yourselves, and
wonder that you get all sorts of ailments. Why wouldn't you stay at
the vicarage to-night? I'm quite sure it would have made no
difference if you had got back to Hollingford in the morning."

"Perhaps not, but I don't care much for staying at other people's
houses."

Dyce examined his companion's face. She did not meet his look, and
bore it with some uneasiness. In the minds of both was a memory
which would have accounted for much more constraint between them
than apparently existed. Six years ago, in the days of late summer,
when Dyce Lashmar was spending his vacation at the vicarage, and
Connie Bride was making ready to go out into the world, they had
been wont to see a good deal of each other, and to exhaust the
topics of the time in long conversations, tending ever to a closer
intimacy of thought and sentiment. The companionship was not very
favourably regarded by Mr. Lashmar, and to the vicar's wife was a
source of angry apprehension. There came the evening when Dyce and
Constance had to bid each other good-bye, with no near prospect of
renewing their talks and rambles together. What might be in the
girl's thought, she alone knew; the young man, effusive in vein of
friendship, seemed never to glance beyond a safe borderline, his
emotions satisfied with intellectual communion. At the moment of
shaking hands, they stood in a field behind the vicarage; dusk was
falling and the spot secluded.--They parted, Constance in a
bewilderment which was to last many a day; for Dyce had kissed her,
and without a word was gone.