Page:The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (emended first edition), Volume 3.djvu/290

280 alone—for, now I think of it, I have business elsewhere; so good evening."

With that I left her (smothering her malicious laughter) and turned aside into the fields, springing up the bank, and pushing through the nearest gap in the hedge. Determined at once to prove the truth—or rather the falsehood of her story, I hastened to Woodford as fast as my legs could carry me—first, veering round by a circuitous course, but the moment I was out of sight of my fair tormentor, cutting away across the country, just as a bird might fly—over pasture-land and fallow, and stubble, and lane—clearing hedges and ditches, and hurdles, till I came to the young squire's gates. Never till now had I known the full fervour of my love—the full strength of my hopes, not wholly crushed even in my hours of deepest despondency, always tenaciously clinging to the thought that one day she might be mine—or if not that, at least that something of my memory, some slight remembrance of our