This meeting, which had been to her a point of romance
in the distance, was turning out to be just nothing--only
disappointment. She was glad to see how quickly the other pair were
coming towards them, and at the same time bitterly vexed that her
_tete-a-tete_ with Arthur was at an end.
CHAPTER VI
Meanwhile Elizabeth Bremerton was sitting pensive on a hill-side
about mid-way between Mannering and Chetworth. She had a bunch of
autumn berries in her hands. Her tweed skirt and country boots
showed traces of mud much deeper than anything on the high road; her
dress was covered with bits of bramble, dead leaves, and
thistledown; and her bright gold hair had been pulled here and there
out of its neat coils, as though she had been pushing through hedges
or groping through woods.
'It's perfectly _monstrous_!' she was thinking. 'It oughtn't to be
allowed. And when we're properly civilized, it won't be allowed. No
one ought to be free to ruin his land as he pleases! It concerns the
_State_. "Manage your land decently--produce a proper amount of
food--or out you go!" And I wouldn't have waited for war to say it!
Ugh! that place!'
And she thought with disgust of the choked and derelict fields, the
ruined gates and fences, the deserted buildings she had just been
wandering through.
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