and there; and the hollies beyond the yew hedge lifted masses of green
lit by scarlet against the pale sky. Her breath went up like smoke as
she walked softly up and down.

There was no sound to disturb her. Once she heard the clink of the
blacksmith's forge half a mile away in the village; once a blackbird
dashed chattering from a hedge, scudded in a long dip, and rose again
over it; a robin followed her in brisk hops, with a kind of pathetic
impertinence in his round eye, as he wondered whether this human
creature's footsteps would not break the iron armour of the ground and
give him a chance to live.

She wondered a thousand things as she went; what kind of a woman this
was that was coming, how she would look, why she had not married Ralph,
and above all, whether she understood--whether she understood!

A kind of frost had fallen on her own soul; she could find no sustenance
there; it was all there, she knew, all the mysterious life that had
rioted within her like spring, in the convent, breathing its fragrances,
bewildering in its wealth of shape and colour. But an icy breath had
petrified it all; it had sunk down out of sight; it needed a soul like
her own, feminine and sympathetic, a soul that had experienced the same
things as her own, that knew the tenderness and love of the Saviour, to
melt that frigid covering and draw out the essences and sweetness again,
that lay there paralysed by this icy environment....

There were wheels at last.

She gathered up her black skirt, and ran to the edge of the low yews
that bounded the garden on the north; and as she caught a glimpse of the
nodding heads of the postilions, the plumes of their mounts, and the
great carriage-roof swaying in the iron ruts, she shrank back again, in
an agony of shyness, terrified of being seen.

The sky had deepened to flaming orange in the west, barred by the tall
pines, before she unlatched the garden-gate to go back to the house.

The windows shone out bright and inviting from the parlour on the
ground-floor and from beneath the high gable of the hall as she came up
the slope. Mistress Atherton, she knew, would be in one of these rooms
if she had not already gone up stairs; and with an instinct of shyness
still strong within her the girl slipped round to the back, and passed
in through the chapel.

The court was lighted by a link that flared beside one of the doorways
on the left, and a couple of great trunks lay below it. A servant