The Salamanca Corpus: Yeoman Fleetwood (1900 ... - Gredos

The Salamanca Corpus: Yeoman Fleetwood (1900)
taller, but this fancy of his was perhaps due to the fact that she held herself more erect,
and
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carried her head with a more imperial grace. Poor Simon! it would scarce be fair to
reveal how much her presence disturbed his devotion, nor how often his usually pious
mind wandered that Sunday morning. Yet he had seldom repeated with greater fervour
the prayer which so often rose to his lips: "God give her to me," though it might be that
there was less of confidence in this petition than of old. Rachel was very devout and
demure, and did not so much as turn her eyes once in his direction; and Simon was too
shy, and perhaps too proud, to linger near the porch when the congregation poured out,
but donned his hat and went home without glancing to right or to left.
The next day, however, as he was wending his way towards a certain wheat-field which
formed part of the Charnleigh Home Farm, he came face to face with Rachel. She was
dressed simply in white, and her broad straw hat was slung by its ribbons over her arm;
had it not been that her hair was dressed in a fanciful fashion which became her
marvellously well, and that her beauty had developed and ripened — so that lovely as
she had been before she was to Simon's dazzled gaze ten times more beautiful now —
he would have said that she looked like her old self. She paused amid the sunlit green
and stretched out both hands.
"I vow you are the very man I wanted to see," she cried. "Pray, were you coming to call
on me, Simon?"
"Nay," he returned, "I would not venture to intrude so soon. I was on my way to inspect
the wheat-field yonder."
“As I foretold," cried Rachel, "you have not changed at all. I left you wandering about
the fields, placid and contemplative; and I return to find you the same. Oh, I could find
it in my heart to envy you."
She spoke petulantly, yet with an undercurrent of real emotion.
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