So, a day or two after the interview with his father in the library,
the self-disinherited heir of Tilgate took the path through the
glade that led into the dell beyond the boundary fence--that dell
which had once been accounted a component part of Tilgate Park,
but which Gilbert Gildersleeve had proved, in his cold-blooded
documentary legal way, to belong in reality to the grounds
of Woodlands. It was in the dell that Granville sometimes ran up
against Gwendoline. He sat down on the broken ledge of ironstone
that overhung the little brook. It was eleven o'clock gone. By
eleven o'clock, three mornings in the week, chance--pure chance--the
patron god of lovers, brought Gwendoline into the dell to meet him.
Presently, a light footfall rang soft upon the path, and next
moment a tall and beautiful girl, with a wealth of auburn hair, and
a bright colour in her cheeks, tripped lightly down the slope, as
if strolling through the wood in maiden meditation, fancy free,
unexpecting any one.
"What, you here, Mr. Kelmscott?" she exclaimed, as she saw him,
her pink cheek deepening as she spoke to a still profounder crimson.
"Yes, I'm here, Gwendoline," Granville Kelmscott answered, with
a smile of recognition at her maidenly pretence of an undesigned
coincidence.
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