There was to be no long lingering, however.

The clouds were deepening, the rain could not be far off.

But if they started soon they could probably reach home before it came down.

Elsmere and Rose hung over the gray stone parapet, mottled with the green and gold of innumerable mosses, and looked down through a fringe of English maidenhair growing along the coping, into the clear eddies of the stream.

Suddenly he raised himself on one elbow, and, shading his eyes, looked to where the vicar and Catherine were standing in front of the inn, touched for an instant by a beam of fitful light slipping between two great rain-clouds.
'How well that hat and dress become your sister!' he said, the words breaking, as it were, from his lips.
'Do you think Catherine pretty ?' said Rose, with an excellent pretence of innocence, detaching a little pebble and flinging it harmlessly at a water-wagtail balancing on a stone below.
He flushed.