step--they were
walking down a turfed path, and over their heads meeting branches of
new leaves hung. Something in his movement made her turn and pause also.
They both paused--and quite unknowingly.

"Do you know," he said, in a low and rather unusual voice, "that as
we were on our way here, I said of you to Penzance, that you were
Life--YOU!"

For a few seconds, as they stood so, his look held her--their eyes
involuntarily and strangely held each other. Something softly glowing in
the sunlight falling on them both, something raining down in the song
of a rising skylark trilling in the blue a field away, something in the
warmed incense of blossoms near them, was calling--calling in the Voice,
though they did not know they heard. Strangely, a splendid blush rose
in a fair flood under her skin. She was conscious of it, and felt a
second's amazed impatience that she should colour like a schoolgirl
suspecting a compliment. He did not look at her as a man looks who has
made a pretty speech. His eyes met hers straight and thoughtfully, and
he repeated his last words as he had before repeated hers.

"That YOU were Life--you!"

The bluebells under water were for the moment incredibly lovely. Her
feeling about the blush melted away as the blush itself had done.

"I am glad you said that!" she answered. "It was a beautiful thing to
say. I have often thought that I should like it to be true."

"It is true," he said.

Then the skylark, showering golden rain, swept down to earth and its
nest in the meadow, and they walked on.

She learned from him, as they walked together, and he also learned from
her, in a manner which built for them as they went from point to point,
a certain degree of delicate intimacy, gradually, during their ramble,
tending to make discussion and question possible. Her intelligent and
broad interest in the work on the estate, her frank desire to acquire
such practical information as she lacked, aroused in himself an interest
he had previously seen no reason that he should feel. He realised that
his outlook upon the unusual situation was being illuminated by an
intelligence at once brilliant and fine, while it was also full of
nice shading. The situation, of course, WAS unusual. A beautiful young
sister-in-law appearing upon the dark horizon of a shamefully ill-used
estate, and restoring, with touches of a wand of gold, what a fellow
who was a blackguard should have set in order years ago. That Lady
An