It was a smile like this, perhaps, which Mistress Wimpole feared and trembled before, for 'twas not a tender smile nor a melting one.

If she was waiting, she did not wait long, nor, to be sure, would she have long waited if she had been kept by any daring laggard.

This was not her way.
'Twas not a laggard who came soon, stepping hurriedly with light feet upon the grass, as though he feared the sound which might be made if he had trodden upon the gravel.

It was Sir John Oxon who came towards her in his riding costume.
He came and stood before her on the other side of the dial, and made her a bow so low that a quick eye might have thought 'twas almost mocking.
His feather, sweeping the ground, caught a fallen rose, which clung to it.

His beauty, when he stood upright, seemed to defy the very morning's self and all the morning world; but Mistress Clorinda did not lift her eyes, but kept them upon her roses, and went on weaving.
"Why did you choose to come ?" she asked.
"Why did you choose to keep the tryst in answer to my message ?" he replied to her.
At this she lifted her great shining eyes and fixed them full upon him.
"I wished," she said, "to hear what you would say--but more to _see_ you than to hear." "And I," he began--"I came--" She held up her white hand with a long-stemmed rose in it--as though a queen should lift a sceptre.
"You came," she answered, "more to see _me_ than to hear.