ought 'poor solitary creature! There's the sun!'

And it seemed to her that it was the first time the sun had shone all
this fine hot year. Gathering her dress in both hands, she stepped into
the drive, and soon was back again in the fields.

Every green thing glittered, and the air was so rain-sweet that all the
summer scents were gone, before the crystal scent of nothing. Mrs.
Pendyce's shoes were soon wet through.

'How happy I am!' she thought 'how glad and happy I am!'

And the feeling, which was not as definite as this, possessed her to the
exclusion of all other feelings in the rain-soaked fields.

The cloud that had hung over Worsted Skeynes so long had spent itself and
gone. Every sound seemed to be music, every moving thing danced. She
longed to get to her early roses, and see how the rain had treated them.
She had a stile to cross, and when she was safely over she paused a
minute to gather her skirts more firmly. It was a home-field she was in
now, and right before her lay the country house. Long and low and white
it stood in the glamourous evening haze, with two bright panes, where the
sunlight fell, watching, like eyes, the confines of its acres; and behind
it, to the left, broad, square, and grey among its elms, the village
church. Around, above, beyond, was peace--the sleepy, misty peace of the
English afternoon.

Mrs. Pendyce walked towards her garden. When she was near it, away to
the right, she saw the Squire and Mr. Barter. They were standing
together looking at a tree and--symbol of a subservient under-world--the
spaniel John was seated on his tail, and he, too, was looking at the
tree. The faces of the Rector and Mr. Pendyce were turned up at the same
angle, and different as those faces and figures were in their eternal
rivalry of type, a sort of essential likeness struck her with a feeling
of surprise. It was as though a single spirit seeking for a body had met
with these two shapes, and becoming confused, decided to inhabit both.

Mrs. Pendyce did not wave to them, but passed quickly, between the
yew-trees, through the wicket-gate....

In her garden bright drops were falling one by one from every rose-leaf,
and in the petals of each rose were jewels of water. A little down the
path a weed caught her eye; she looked closer, and saw that there were
several.

'Oh,' she thought, 'how dreadfully they've let the weeds I must really
speak to Jackman!'

A rose-tree, that she herself h