Ann Veronica had three things very definitely settled by the time when, a little after mid-day, she found herself perched up on a gate between a bridle-path and a field that commanded the whole wide stretch of country between Chalking and Waldersham.  Firstly, she did not intend to marry at all, and particularly she did not mean to marry Mr. Manning; secondly, by some measure or other, she meant to go on with her studies, not at the Tredgold Schools but at the Imperial College; and, thirdly, she was, as an immediate and decisive act, a symbol of just exactly where she stood, a declaration of free and adult initiative, going that night to the Fadden Ball.

But the possible attitude of her father she had still to face.  So far she had the utmost difficulty in getting on to that vitally important matter.  The whole of that relationship persisted in remaining obscure.  What would happen when next morning she returned to Morningside Park?

He couldn’t turn her out of doors.  But what he could do or might do she could not imagine.  She was not afraid of violence, but she was afraid of something mean, some secondary kind of force.  Suppose he stopped all her allowance, made it imperative that she should either stay ineffectually resentful at home or earn a living for herself at once....  It appeared highly probable to her that he would stop her allowance.

What can a girl do?

Somewhere at this point Ann Veronica’s speculations were interrupted and turned aside by the approach of a horse and rider.  Mr. Ramage, that iron-gray man of the world, appeared dressed in a bowler hat and a suit of hard gray, astride of a black horse.  He pulled rein at the sight of her, saluted, and regarded her with his rather too protuberant eyes.  The girl’s gaze met his in interested inquiry.

“You’ve got my view,” he said, after a pensive second.  “I always get off here and lean over that rail for a bit.  May I do so to-day?”

“It’s your gate,” she said, amiably; “you got it first.  It’s for you to say if I may sit on it.”

He slipped off the horse.  “Let me introduce you to Caesar,” he said; and she patted Caesar’s neck, and remarked how soft his nose was, and secretly deplored the ugliness of equine teeth.  Ramage tethered the horse to the farther gate-post, and Caesar blew heavily and began to investigate the hedge.

Ramage leaned over the gate at Ann Veronica’s side, and for a moment there was silence.

He made some obvious comments on the wide view warming toward its autumnal blaze that spread itself in hill and valley, wood and village, below.

“It’s as broad as life,” said Mr. Ramage, regarding it and putting a well-booted foot up on the bottom rail.

Part 7

“And what are you doing here, young lady,” he said, looking up at her face, “wandering alone so far from home?”

“I like long walks,” said Ann Veronica, looking down on him.