Explore "At Love's Cost" by Charles Garvice on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
As Stafford climbed the hill steadily, he wondered who the girl was. It did not occur to him that she might be the daughter of the Mr. Heron to whom the stream belonged and from whose family name the whole dale had taken its own; for, though she had looked and spoken like a lady, the habit, the gauntlets, the soft felt hat were old and weather-stained: and her familiarity with the proper treatment of a sheep in difficulty indicated rather the farmer's daughter than that of the squire.
She was not by any means the first pretty girl Stafford had seen--he had a very large acquaintance in London, and one or two women whose beauty had been blazoned by the world were more than friendly with the popular Stafford Orme--but he thought as he went up the hill, which seemed to have no end, that he had never seen a more beautiful face than this girl's; certainly he had never seen one which had impressed him more deeply. Perhaps it was the character of the loveliness which haunted him so persistently: it was so unlike the conventional drawing-room type with which he was so familiar.