check and repressed? She
appeared to be making acquaintance with unexpected depths of
apprehension and emotion in herself. And this, for cause unknown,
brought her into more lively commerce with her immediate surroundings
and the sentiment of them. Her eyes rested on them questioningly, as
though they might afford a tally to, perhaps an explanation of, the
strange, yet lovely emotion which had invaded her.

Here in the valley, notwithstanding the recent drought, the grass was
lush. Across the paddock, just within the circuit of the far railings,
a grove of large beech trees broke the expanse of living green. Beyond,
seen beneath their down-sweeping branches, the surface of the Long
Water repeated the hot purple, the dun-colour and silver-pink, of the
sky. On the opposite slope, extending from the elm avenue to the
outlying masses of the woods and upward to the line of oaks which run
parallel with the park palings, were cornlands. The wheat, a red-gold,
was already for the most part bound in shocks. A company of women,
wearing lilac and pink sunbonnets and all-round, blue, linen aprons
faded by frequent washing to a fine clearness of tone, came down over
the blond stubble. They carried, in little baskets and shining tins,
tea for the white-shirted harvesters who were busy setting up the
storm-fallen sheaves. They laughed and talked together, and their
voices came to Honoria with a pleasant quality of sound. Two stumbling
baby-children, hand in hand, followed them, as did a small,
white-and-tan, spotted dog. One woman was bareheaded and wore a black
bodice, which gave a singular value to her figure amid the
all-obtaining yellow of the corn.

The scene in its simple and homely charm held the poetry of that
happier side of labour, of that most ancient of all industries--the
husbandman's--and of the generous giving of the soil. Set in a frame of
opulently coloured woodland and sky, the stately red-brick and
freestone house crowning the high land and looking forth upon it all,
the whole formed, to Honoria's thinking, a very noble picture. And
then, of a sudden, in the midst of her quiet enjoyment of it and a
tenderness which the sight of it somehow begot in her, Honoria was
seized by sharp, unreasoning regret that she must so soon leave it.
Unreasoning regret that she had engaged to go abroad this winter, with
poor, pretty, frivolous, young Lady Tobermory--spoilt child of society
and of wealth--now half-crazed, rendered de