_is_ good!" Martin said. "I'm awfully pleased
to hear that. They'll make an ideal pair."

Grizel glared at him, with the eyes of a fury.

"Oh, go to your study!" she cried vindictively. "Go to your study--and
write books!"

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

THE VEIL FALLS.

The Squire heard the news of Peignton's engagement at the County Club,
and carried it to his wife on his return to lunch. He found Cassandra
on the terrace, where she had spent what was perhaps one of the happiest
hours of her life. An hour before she had opened one of the long
windows of the morning room, and had stepped bareheaded, in her white
morning dress, into a bath of sunshine and warmth. Hitherto though the
sun had shone, east winds had prevailed--making it necessary to put on
wrappings for even the shortest excursion, but this morning the "nip"
had departed; what wind there was blew balmily from the south, and the
temperature without was warmer than that in the house. There is always
a special thrill attendant on the first breath of summer, a special
consciousness of freedom and escape, when for the first time it becomes
possible to leave the house and wander bareheaded under the skies, but
never, as it seemed to Cassandra, had a springtide been so wonderful as
this.

She looked downwards over the terraced gardens, and everywhere the world
seemed new. Green branches on the larches, shimmers of green on oak and
ash, swelling of buds on the great chestnuts, and through the bare brown
of the earth the shooting of living things. Everything was new and
pregnant with joys to come, and from her own heart came an answering
song of joy. It seemed in mysterious fashion as though the stateness of
custom had been left behind, with other drearinesses of the long winter,
and the coming spring had vivified her life. The air breathed hope and
expectation, and although she could not have said to what special event
she was looking forward, she knew that there was hope in her heart also,
and an expectation which gilded the coming days. It was good to be
alive, to wander bareheaded in the sunshine inhaling the fragrance of
flowers, to behold reflected in the long windows the graceful glimpses
of one's own form, to look around the fair domain lying to right and
left, and be able to say, "This is mine!"

Cassandra clasped her hands behind her back and strolled to and fro,
thinking the many and inconsequent thoughts that come to a woman in such
hours.