w pageants, new
sorceries wherewith to play upon the nerves of wonder. Across the hollow
a great crag clothed in still leafless chestnut-trees reared itself
against the lake. The innumerable lines of stem and branch, warm brown
or steely gray, were drawn sharp on silver air, while at the very summit
of the rock one superb tree with branching limbs, touched with intense
black, sprang high above the rest, the proud plume or ensign of the
wood. Through the trunks the blaze of distant snow and the purples of
craggy mountains; in front the glistening spray of peach or cherry
blossom, breaking the still wintry beauty of that majestic grove. And in
all the air, dropping from the heaven, spread on the hills, or
shimmering on the lake, a diffusion of purest rose and deepest blue,
lake and cloud and mountain each melting into the other, as though
heaven and earth conspired merely to give value and relief to the year's
new birth, to this near sparkle of young leaf and blossom which shone
like points of fire on the deep breast of the distance.

On the green ledge which ran round the hollow were children tugging at a
goat. Opposite was a _contadino's_ house of gray stone. A water-wheel
turned beside it, and a stream, brought down from the hills, ran
chattering past, a white and dancing thread of water. Everything was
very still and soft. The children and the river made their voices heard;
and there were nightingales singing in the woods below. Otherwise all
was quiet. With a tranquil and stealthy joy the spring was taking
possession. Nay--the Angelus! It swung over the lake and rolled from
village to village....

The tears were in Julie's eyes. Such beauty as this was apt now to crush
and break her. All her being was still sore, and this appeal of nature
was sometimes more than she could bear.

Only a few short weeks since Warkworth had gone out of her life--since
Delafield at a stroke had saved her from ruin--since Lord Lackington had
passed away.

One letter had reached her from Warkworth, a wild and incoherent letter,
written at night in a little room of a squalid hotel near the Gare de
Sceaux. Her telegram had reached him, and for him, as for her, all
was over.

But the letter was by no means a mere cry of baffled passion. There was
in it a new note of moral anguish, as fresh and startling in her ear,
coming from him, as the cry of passion itself. In the language of
religion, it was the utterance of a man "convicted of sin