'In twelve minutes from this present moment,' he added, looking at his watch, 'I'll be at the summit and look out for you.' She went round to the corner of the shrubbery, whence she could watch him down the slope leading to the foot of the hill on which the church stood.

There she saw waiting for him a white spot--a mason in his working clothes.

Stephen met this man and stopped.
To her surprise, instead of their moving on to the churchyard, they both leisurely sat down upon a stone close by their meeting-place, and remained as if in deep conversation.

Elfride looked at the time; nine of the twelve minutes had passed, and Stephen showed no signs of moving.
More minutes passed--she grew cold with waiting, and shivered.

It was not till the end of a quarter of an hour that they began to slowly wend up the hill at a snail's pace.
'Rude and unmannerly!' she said to herself, colouring with pique.
'Anybody would think he was in love with that horrid mason instead of with----' The sentence remained unspoken, though not unthought.
She returned to the porch.
'Is the man you sent for a lazy, sit-still, do-nothing kind of man ?' she inquired of her father.
'No,' he said surprised; 'quite the reverse.