When Toyner had left Fentown to go and rescue Markham, Ann had stood a good way off upon the dark shore just to satisfy herself that he had got into the boat and rowed down the river.

This was not an indication that she doubted him.

She followed him unseen because she felt that night that there were elements in his conduct which she did not in the least understand.

When he was gone, she went back to fulfil her part of the contract, and she had a strength of purpose in fulfilling it which did not belong mainly to the obligation of her promise.

Something in his look when he had come in this evening, in his glance as he bade her farewell, made her eager to fulfil it.
All night, asleep or awake, she was more or less haunted with this new feeling for Toyner--a feeling which did not in her mind resemble love or liking, which would have been perhaps best translated by the word "reverence," but that was not a word in Ann's vocabulary, not even an idea in her mental horizon.
Our greatest gains begin to be a fact in the soul before we have any mental conception of them! The next day Ann was up early.