ght to her faith
had overwhelmingly affirmed itself in the very face of menace and
suspicion. She had never seen him more untroubled, more naturally and
unconsciously in possession of himself, than after the cross-examination
to which she had subjected him: it was almost as if he had been aware of
her lurking doubts, and had wanted the air cleared as much as she did.

It was as clear, thank Heaven! as the bright outer light that surprised
her almost with a touch of summer when she issued from the house for her
daily round of the gardens. She had left Boyne at his desk, indulging
herself, as she passed the library door, by a last peep at his quiet
face, where he bent, pipe in his mouth, above his papers, and now she
had her own morning's task to perform. The task involved on such charmed
winter days almost as much delighted loitering about the different
quarters of her demesne as if spring were already at work on shrubs and
borders. There were such inexhaustible possibilities still before her,
such opportunities to bring out the latent graces of the old place,
without a single irreverent touch of alteration, that the winter months
were all too short to plan what spring and autumn executed. And her
recovered sense of safety gave, on this particular morning, a peculiar
zest to her progress through the sweet, still place. She went first to
the kitchen-garden, where the espaliered pear-trees drew complicated
patterns on the walls, and pigeons were fluttering and preening about
the silvery-slated roof of their cot. There was something wrong about
the piping of the hothouse, and she was expecting an authority from
Dorchester, who was to drive out between trains and make a diagnosis of
the boiler. But when she dipped into the damp heat of the greenhouses,
among the spiced scents and waxy pinks and reds of old-fashioned
exotics,--even the flora of Lyng was in the note!--she learned that the
great man had not arrived, and the day being too rare to waste in an
artificial atmosphere, she came out again and paced slowly along the
springy turf of the bowling-green to the gardens behind the house. At
their farther end rose a grass terrace, commanding, over the fish-pond
and the yew hedges, a view of the long house-front, with its twisted
chimney-stacks and the blue shadows of its roof angles, all drenched in
the pale gold moisture of the air.

Seen thus, across the level tracery of the yews, under the suffused,
mild light, it sent he