The Tryst (Annotated) (Grace Livingston Hill Book) by Grace Livingston Hill

wanted to go in at once. It was growing cold. She had stayed out altogether too long now. Yet she would go by the lower path, which was much longer, and when Patty with glowing cheeks and downcast eyes finally acquiesced and followed her bearing pillows and shawls and other paraphernalia, they arrived at the patch of sunlight below to find it uninhabited and lonely and Miss Cole puffed and scolded all the way back up the incline as if it had been Patty’s fault that they went down. 
    When they got back to the hotel Miss Cole said she would write some letters, and she sent Patty down to the office three times to see if the afternoon mail had come yet. Patty found it trying, but managed a roundabout way and used her eyes instead of her tongue, returning undiscovered. In fact, the young man who was the innocent cause of all this disturbance was walking several miles down the mountain very rapidly and trying to make up his mind what he would do next. He had made the experiment of calling out from the sheltered path after he had seen the girl who looked like his old friend go down in that direction, because it seemed a very good way to test out whether it was really his friend or only someone who resembled her, without making an embarrassing situation. She had not answered, and of course he had made a mistake, but somehow he felt more disappointed than the circumstances merited. After all, he had been very well content these three years he had been away in a foreign land. Why should he have such an ungovernable desire to see a girl who had not chosen to answer his many insistent letters, and who had so promptly forgotten him after their pleasant summer together? Of course she had been his beloved mother's admiration, and that probably was the psychology of the thing. He wanted his mother, missed her more every minute he stayed in this land of his birth, and his soul cried out for anything that had been dear to her or associated with her. He was foolish to think any girl could help fill his mother's place in his need! Perhaps after all it would be a wild goose chase to run away out West to find her. Why should he? Not now, anyway, not until after his tryst had been kept. Then he would know what he was going to do. That was only a week off anyway. Scarcely time for a western trip. He would get away to-morrow, if possible, or the next day at the latest. He had no relish for the sort of life his uncle was leading, and no love for the selfish old man who seemed to desire to own him body and soul probably to satisfy more selfish fancies. It disgusted him to be flaunted around like a hero, and stood up before the hotel ladies as a kind of tame pet. If it were not for the pitifulness in the old man's eyes sometimes he would go without hesitation, but something seemed to say to him that he must wait a little longer and fulfill whatever exaggerated duty had brought him here. Then he might go freely and without compunction. 
    He walked far down the mountain that afternoon, until the long shadows fell into the deep pool of silence in the valley, and the fragrant darkness warned him that he must go back if he did not wish to be lost on the mountainside. 
    He emerged from the quiet blackness of the trail at the top with a feeling of deep sadness upon him, and went straight to his room, where he found an anxious summons from the old servant. Hespur had been vibrating between his master's room and the nephew's for the last two hours, and his haggard face showed how hard his task had been. Treeves hurried to answer the call to his uncle's presence and found the old man writhing on his bed in a fit brought on by excessive anger: 
    “You had no right, you young rapscallion!” he blustered furiously, his face growing purpler as he saw the young man at last. “You had no right to go off without letting anybody know --!” 
    “There! There, Master! Mister Treeves, Master!” soothed old Hespur laboriously. "The young master he didn't realize