Now here she was come, he knew not how, and his arranged
welcome stultified.
His face became gloomy at her necessity for stepping into the
road, and more still at the little look of embarrassment which
appeared on hers at having to perform the meeting with him under
an apple-tree ten feet high in the middle of the market-place.
Having had occasion to take off the new gloves she had bought to
come home in, she held out to him a hand graduating from pink at
the tips of the fingers to white at the palm; and the reception
formed a scene, with the tree over their heads, which was not by
any means an ordinary one in Sherton Abbas streets.
Nevertheless, the greeting on her looks and lips was of a
restrained type, which perhaps was not unnatural. For true it was
that Giles Winterborne, well-attired and well-mannered as he was
for a yeoman, looked rough beside her. It had sometimes dimly
occurred to him, in his ruminating silence at Little Hintock, that
external phenomena--such as the lowness or height or color of a
hat, the fold of a coat, the make of a boot, or the chance
attitude or occupation of a limb at the instant of view--may have
a great influence upon feminine opinion of a man's worth--so
frequently founded on non-essentials; but a certain causticity of
mental tone towards himself and the world in general had prevented
to-day, as always, any enthusiastic action on the strength of that
reflection; and her momentary instinct of reserve at first sight
of him was the penalty he paid for his laxness.
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