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a manly attitude, smoking a cigarette, for fear lest the Young Lady in
Grey should come glittering round the corner. For the flavour of the
Young Lady in Grey was present through it all, mixing with the flowers
and all the delight of it, a touch that made this second day quite
different from the first, an undertone of expectation, anxiety, and
something like regret that would not be ignored.
It was only late in the long evening that, quite abruptly, he began
to repent, vividly and decidedly, having fled these two people. He
was getting hungry, and that has a curious effect upon the emotional
colouring of our minds. The man was a sinister brute, Hoopdriver saw in
a flash of inspiration, and the girl--she was in some serious trouble.
And he who might have helped her had taken his first impulse as
decisive--and bolted. This new view of it depressed him dreadfully. What
might not be happening to her now? He thought again of her tears. Surely
it was merely his duty, seeing the trouble afoot, to keep his eye upon
it.
He began riding fast to get quit of such selfreproaches. He found
himself in a tortuous tangle of roads, and as the dusk was coming on,
emerged, not at Petworth but at Easebourne, a mile from Midhurst. "I'm
getting hungry," said Mr. Hoopdriver, inquiring of a gamekeeper in
Easebourne village. "Midhurst a mile, and Petworth five!--Thenks, I'll
take Midhurst."
He came into Midhurst by the bridge at the watermill, and up the North
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