iss Felicia near to
veritable wailing. For while thanking them both she, in fact, put them
both aside. This in no sour or irritable humour; but with a listlessness
and apartness hopeless to overcome. She prayed them to give her time.
Soon she would begin again; but not just yet. She "couldn't begin again
to order--couldn't make herself begin again. They must not trouble, only
be patient with her, please, a little longer--she wasn't, indeed she
wasn't, pretending"--a statement which, in its simplicity, cut Carteret
to the quick--for "she meant to begin again directly she could."

To-day the weather took an encouraging turn for the better. Following
the spell of fog and wet a northerly wind at last arose. It swept the sky
clear of clouds, the land of melancholy vapours, begetting a brilliance
of atmosphere which wooed our maiden to come forth and once more affront
the open. She therefore ordered the dog-cart at two o'clock. Would
herself drive; and, "if Aunt Felicia didn't mind and think her
unsociable, would take Patch for sole company, because then"--renewed
apologies--"she needn't talk and she felt disinclined to do so."

During the first half mile or so, as must be confessed, each prick of
the black horse's ears and change in his pace sent a quake through her,
as did the sight of every vehicle upon the road she passed or met. Her
nerve was nowhere, her self-confidence in tatters. But, since this
parlous state was, in the main, physical, air and movement, along with
the direct call on her attention, steadied the one and knit up the
ravelled edges of the other. By the time the plateau was reached and the
hill lay behind her, she could afford to walk the horse, tentatively
invite her soul, and attempt to hold communion with Nature. Sorrow--as
well as the Napoleonic Patch--still sat very squarely beside her; but
the nightmare of mortality, with consequent blankness and emptiness, was
no longer omnipresent. Interest again stirred in her, the healthy
instinct of going on.

Except in the foreground, where foxy browns of withered bracken and
pink-shot browns of withered heather gave richness of tone, the colouring
of the great view was somewhat cold. It dealt in thin, uncertain green,
the buff of stubble, in sharp slate-like blues blended in places with
indigo, the black purple of hawthorn hedges and grey-brown filigree of
leafless trees.--This did her good, she asking to be strengthened and
stimulated rather than merely so