His attack had been for the moment repulsed.

He gathered from Rose's manner that Catherine's action with regard to the picnic had not been unmeaning nor accidental, as on second thoughts he had been half-trying to persuade himself.

Evidently those about her felt it to be ominous.

Well, then, at worst, when they met they would meet on a different footing, with a sense of something critical between them.

Oh, if he did but know a little more clearly how he stood! He spent a noonday hour on a gray rock on the side of the fell, between Whindale and Marrisdale, studying the path opposite, the stepping-stones, the bit of white road.