Read "Stretton" by Henry Kingsley online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Allan having long known that it was not himself, was not very terribly put out of the way when he found who it was; never having had a thought for himself, but having merely fallen in love haphazard, he could not in the least degree see why he, so utterly unsuited for her, should take her from Roland, who seemed to him exactly suited for her. But he was desperately in love with her nevertheless.
He was to go to Shrewsbury by the twelve o'clock train, and he had got a cart to take his luggage for him, and would himself walk. He was on the road, with Caradoc, Lawley, and Longmynd getting dim behind him, when he was aware of a young lady scouring swiftly on horseback across a grass field towards him. This young lady looked for a gap in the hedge (there was one, it being off Aunt Eleanor's farm), but she did not see it, and leaning back, topped her horse across it on to the footpath, about forty yards before him. Then she dismounted and waited for him, and when he came up, she said, "I have caught you."