“About her—­no!  She has just come home, I believe, with her husband.  They arranged to return this afternoon—­to the inn beyond here.”

“She’s not there.”

“How do you know?”

“Because she’s here.  She’s in my van,” he added slowly.

“What new trouble has come?” murmured Mrs. Yeobright, putting her hand over her eyes.

“I can’t explain much, ma’am.  All I know is that, as I was going along the road this morning, about a mile out of Anglebury, I heard something trotting after me like a doe, and looking round there she was, white as death itself.  ‘Oh, Diggory Venn!’ she said, ’I thought ‘twas you:  will you help me?  I am in trouble.’”

“How did she know your Christian name?” said Mrs. Yeobright doubtingly.

“I had met her as a lad before I went away in this trade.  She asked then if she might ride, and then down she fell in a faint.  I picked her up and put her in, and there she has been ever since.  She has cried a good deal, but she has hardly spoke; all she has told me being that she was to have been married this morning.  I tried to get her to eat something, but she couldn’t; and at last she fell asleep.”

“Let me see her at once,” said Mrs. Yeobright, hastening towards the van.

The reddleman followed with the lantern, and, stepping up first, assisted Mrs. Yeobright to mount beside him.  On the door being opened she perceived at the end of the van an extemporized couch, around which was hung apparently all the drapery that the reddleman possessed, to keep the occupant of the little couch from contact with the red materials of his trade.  A young girl lay thereon, covered with a cloak.  She was asleep, and the light of the lantern fell upon her features.

A fair, sweet, and honest country face was revealed, reposing in a nest of wavy chestnut hair.  It was between pretty and beautiful.  Though her eyes were closed, one could easily imagine the light necessarily shining in them as the culmination of the luminous workmanship around.  The groundwork of the face was hopefulness; but over it now lay like a foreign substance a film of anxiety and grief.  The grief had been there so shortly as to have abstracted nothing of the bloom, and had as yet but given a dignity to what it might eventually undermine.  The scarlet of her lips had not had time to abate, and just now it appeared still more intense by the absence of the neighbouring and more transient colour of her cheek.  The lips frequently parted, with a murmur of words.  She seemed to belong rightly to a madrigal—­to require viewing through rhyme and harmony.

One thing at least was obvious:  she was not made to be looked at thus.  The reddleman had appeared conscious of as much, and, while Mrs. Yeobright looked in upon her, he cast his eyes aside with a delicacy which well became him.  The sleeper apparently thought so too, for the next moment she opened her own.