ed the orchard, and sat down under a cherry-tree. A breeze
sighed in the higher boughs; the sky seen through their green was very
blue and very white in cloud--those heavy white clouds almost always
present in river landscape. Bees, sheltering out of the wind, hummed
softly, and over the lush grass fell the thick shade from those
fruit-trees planted by her father five-and-twenty, years ago. Birds were
almost silent, the cuckoos had ceased to sing, but wood-pigeons were
cooing. The breath and drone and cooing of high summer were not for long
a sedative to her excited nerves. Crouched over her knees she began to
scheme. Her father must be made to back her up. Why should he mind
so long as she was happy? She had not lived for nearly nineteen years
without knowing that her future was all he really cared about. She had,
then, only to convince him that her future could not be happy without
Jon. He thought it a mad fancy. How foolish the old were, thinking
they could tell what the young felt! Had not he confessed that he--when
young--had loved with a grand passion? He ought to understand! 'He piles
up his money for me,' she thought; 'but what's the use, if I'm not going
to be happy?' Money, and all it bought, did not bring happiness. Love
only brought that. The ox-eyed daisies in this orchard, which gave it
such a moony look sometimes, grew wild and happy, and had their hour.
'They oughtn't to have called me Fleur,' she mused, 'if they didn't mean
me to have my hour, and be happy while it lasts.' Nothing real stood
in the way, like poverty, or disease--sentiment only, a ghost from
the unhappy past! Jon was right. They wouldn't let you live, these old
people! They made mistakes, committed crimes, and wanted their children
to go on paying! The breeze died away; midges began to bite. She got up,
plucked a piece of honeysuckle, and went in.

It was hot that night. Both she and her mother had put on thin, pale
low frocks. The dinner flowers were pale. Fleur was struck with the pale
look of everything; her father's face, her mother's shoulders; the pale
panelled walls, the pale grey velvety carpet, the lamp-shade, even the
soup was pale. There was not one spot of colour in the room, not even
wine in the pale glasses, for no one drank it. What was not pale
was black--her father's clothes, the butler's clothes, her retriever
stretched out exhausted in the window, the curtains black with a
cream pattern. A moth came in, and that was pal