e dust on the roadway, of the
bitter-sweet tang of the bracken and faint aftermath of hay; the breath
at his nostrils was drunken with sweet odour. He had come back to face
Archelaus, it was true, but he came back a man.

It was a good world, and he would make his corner of it still better....
How splendid it was to be alive and tingling with the knowledge that
everything lay before one! Pain and sorrow were only words that fell
away into nothingness before the joy of merely living....

So he felt as, late that night, he leant upon his window sill and stared
out at the darkness that was the background for his imagings of what was
to come. Upon his thoughts there broke the chattering scream of a rabbit
caught by a stoat, tearing the velvet tissues of the night's silence. On
and on it kept, always on one high note, with a horrible persistence.
Ishmael listened, sorry that even a rabbit should suffer on this night
of nights, and was glad when the screaming wavered and died into a
merciful stillness. As he dropped asleep the sardonic laughing bark of a
full-fed fox came echoing from the earn.

CHAPTER XI

GLAMOUR

Full summer had come, and with it Miss Grey. She was not staying at the
Manor, as Annie had taken a violent dislike to the idea of visitors, and
Ishmael dreaded possible unpleasantness, so that he had been thankful
when Blanche of her own accord suggested going into lodgings. She wanted
to bring a friend with her, she said, a girl who was peaky after too
long nursing of a sick mother in London. Therefore Vassie interviewed
Mrs. Penticost, a cheery soul who rejoiced in a little old Queen Anne
house called "Paradise," a mile along the cliff-path, where it gave on
the outskirts of the village. Blanche was in raptures over the names
Penticost and Paradise, and would have been in raptures over her
landlady too if that worthy woman had not chosen to be rather
unresponsive towards her, though frankly adoring the little friend
Judith Parminter.

Judy was only nineteen, a slim, awkward girl with high cheekbones and
deep-sunk hazel eyes that gave her a look not unlike that of a beautiful
monkey--so Killigrew, when he came down to take up his quarters at the
inn, for a summer's painting, declared. He swore that Judy would be a
great beauty, but that she would always be like a monkey with those
deep, sad eyes and the bistre stains below them that were the only tinge
of colour upon her dark skin. She was a shy,