It was a mild,
still evening; she sat down on the stone, and removed her veil. The
moon, then in its first quarter, was low in the west, and shone beneath
the branches of the tree.
Presently she was aware--though not by any sound--that some one was
approaching, and she drew back in the shadow of the tree. Down the lane
came a horseman, mounted on a tall, black horse. The outline of his
figure and the manner in which he rode fixed Edith's gaze as if by a
spell, and made the blood hum in her ears. Nearer he came, and now his
face was discernible in the level moonlight. It was impossible to
mistake that countenance: the horseman was David Poindexter. His
costume, however, was different from any he had ever before worn; there
was nothing clerical about it; nor was that black horse from the
Poindexter stables. Then, too, how noiselessly he rode!--as noiselessly
as a ghost. That, however, must have been because his horse's hoofs
fell on the soft turf. He rode slowly, and his head was bent as if in
thought; but almost before Edith could draw her breath, much less to
speak, he had passed beneath the boughs of the tree, and was riding on
toward the village.
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