Moreover, the appointments of the dining- room were simple and homely even for the date, betokening a countrified household of the smaller gentry, without much wealth or ambition--formerly a numerous class, but now in great part ousted by the territorial landlords.
One of the two sitters was a young lady in white muslin, who listened somewhat impatiently to the remarks of her companion, an elderly, rubicund personage, whom the merest stranger could have pronounced to be her father.

The watcher evinced no signs of moving, and it became evident that affairs were not so simple as they first had seemed.

The tall farmer was in fact no accidental spectator, and he stood by premeditation close to the trunk of a tree, so that had any traveller passed along the road without the park gate, or even round the lawn to the door, that person would scarce have noticed the other, notwithstanding that the gate was quite near at hand, and the park little larger than a paddock.

There was still light enough in the western heaven to brighten faintly one side of the man's face, and to show against the trunk of the tree behind the admirable cut of his profile; also to reveal that the front of the manor-house, small though it seemed, was solidly built of stone in that never-to-be-surpassed style for the English country residence--the mullioned and transomed Elizabethan.
The lawn, although neglected, was still as level as a bowling-green--which indeed it might once have served for; and the blades of grass before the window were raked by the candle-shine, which stretched over them so far as to touch the yeoman's face in front.
Within the dining-room there were also, with one of the twain, the same signs of a hidden purpose that marked the farmer.

The young lady's mind was straying as clearly into the shadows as that of the loiterer was fixed upon the room--nay, it could be said that she was quite conscious of his presence outside.