Rachel loved company, it was true. But it was equally true that she loved to be alone, especially when out-of-doors. It was during such times that she experienced her favorite and her most frustrating feeling, that feeling of excitement and exhilaration welling to the surface and sometimes even spilling over so that she was forced to run or to dance, to shout or to sing. The only thing she did not like about such feelings was that she could never explain them to herself. There was the exuberance, the reaching out for something more valuable than anything else in life or beyond it. But what was that something? She had often stood with her arms outstretched, her face lifted to the sky, and longed and longed for... what?

This was not quite such a moment, but it was very welcome, nonetheless, the unexpected interval of quiet peace. The little stream bubbling over the uneven ground was the item that finally took her mind completely away from the garden party and her dreadful infatuation for a man who should be no concern of hers whatsoever.

Two minutes after spotting the stream, Rachel was sitting beside it, her hat discarded on the ground at her side, her dress pulled safely up to her knees, so that it would not get wet, and her slippered feet resting on a large rounded stone over and around which the icy-cold stream gurgled its way to the river below. Her weight was braced on her hands behind her. She was humming a tune and watching her tapping toes.

***

David had indeed been detained on the upper lawn. He had deliberately stayed with his godmother for a while, taking her arm, leading her to a chair in the shade, and scolding her for putting herself to the trouble of arranging such an entertainment for him.

"Nonsense!" she said. "You know you are the son I never had. Or the grandson, rather. It is no compliment, is it, Davy lad, to be told that you might have been my son? Now, to business. You are to come to live with me immediately, my boy, and we will find genteel employment for you."