He put up his eye-glass, and examined the figure as it came nearer.
'She's just come up, I suppose, from the farm,' said Pamela,
pointing to some red roofs among the trees, in the wide hollow below
the hill.
'"Athene Ageleie"!' murmured the Major, who had been proxime for the
Ireland, and a Balliol man. 'She holds herself well--beautiful
hair!'
'Beryl, this is Miss Bremerton,' said Aubrey Mannering, with a
cordial ring in his voice, as he introduced his fiancee to
Elizabeth. The two shook hands, and Elizabeth thought the girl's
manner a little stand-off, and wondered why.
The pony had soon been tied up, and the party spread themselves on
the grass of the hill-side; for Holme Wood Hill was a famous point
of view, and the sunny peace of the afternoon invited loitering.
For miles to the eastward spread an undulating chalk plain, its
pale grey or purplish soil showing in the arable fields where the
stubbles were just in process of ploughing, its monotony broken by a
vast wood of oak and beech into which the hill-side ran down--a wood
of historic fame, which had been there when Senlac was fought, had
furnished ship-timber for the Armada, and sheltered many a cavalier
fugitive of the Civil Wars.
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