rovoked by
his coldness, "Sir Paul seems to have everything to say to all of us,
but nothing to any one of us." He was kind to all with a sort of great
and distant courtesy that was too secure even to condescend. And so
the years passed away.

III

It was nearly noon at the Castle of Wresting, and the whole house
was deserted, for the Duke had ridden out at daybreak to the hunt; and
all that could find a horse to ride had gone with him; and, for it was
not far afield, all else that could walk had gone afoot. So bright and
cheerful a day was it that the Duchess had sent out her pavilion to be
pitched in a lawn in the wood, and the Duke with his friends were to
dine there; none were left in the castle save a few of the elder
serving-maids, and the old porter, who was lame. About midday,
however, it seemed that one had been left; for Paul, now a tall man,
strongly built and comely, yet with a somewhat dreamful air, as though
he pondered difficult things within himself, and a troubled brow,
under which looked out large and gentle eyes, came with a quick step
down a stairway. He turned neither to right nor left, but passed
through the porter's lodge. Here the road from the town came up into
the castle on the left, cut steeply in the hill, and you could see the
red roofs laid out like a map beneath, with the church and the bridge;
to the right ran a little terrace under the wall. Paul came through
the lodge, nodding gravely to the porter, who returned his salute with
a kind of reverence; then he walked on to the terrace, and stood for a
moment leaning against the low wall that bounded it; below him lay for
miles the great wood of Wresting, now all ablaze with the brave gold
of autumn leaves; here was a great tract of beeches all rusty red;
there was the pale gold of elms. The forest lay in the plain, here and
there broken by clearings or open glades; in one or two places could
be seen the roofs of villages, with the tower of a church rising
gravely among trees. On the horizon ran a blue line of downs, pure and
fine above the fretted gold of the forest. The air was very still,
with a fresh sparkle in it, and the sun shone bright in a cloudless
heaven; it was a day when the heaviest heart grows light, and when it
seems the bravest thing that can be designed to be alive.

Once or twice, as Paul leaned to look, there came from the wood, very
far away, the faint notes of a horn; he smiled to hear