e
power to hurt or disturb him personally, that he was incapable of seeing
how it could hurt or disturb others. If those who read it were affected,
so much the worse for them. He had a real, if unobtrusive, contempt for
groundlings, of whatever class; and it never entered his head to step an
inch out of his course in deference to their vagaries. Nor did it come
home to him that Mrs. Noel, wrapped in the glamour which he cast about
her, could possibly suffer from the meanness of vulgar minds. Shropton's
note, indeed, caused him the more annoyance of those two documents. It
was like his brother-in-law to make much of little!

He hardly dozed at all during his swift journey through the sleeping
country; nor when he reached his room at Monkland did he go to bed. He
had the wonderful, upborne feeling of man on the verge of achievement.
His spirit and senses were both on fire--for that was the quality of
this woman, she suffered no part of him to sleep, and he was glad of her
exactions.

He drank some tea; went out, and took a path up to the moor. It was not
yet eight o'clock when he reached the top of the nearest tor. And there,
below him, around, and above, was a land and sky transcending even his
exaltation. It was like a symphony of great music; or the nobility of
a stupendous mind laid bare; it was God up there, in His many moods.
Serenity was spread in the middle heavens, blue, illimitable, and
along to the East, three huge clouds, like thoughts brooding over the
destinies below, moved slowly toward the sea, so that great shadows
filled the valleys. And the land that lay under all the other sky was
gleaming, and quivering with every colour, as it were, clothed with the
divine smile. The wind, from the North, whereon floated the white birds
of the smaller clouds, had no voice, for it was above barriers, utterly
free. Before Miltoun, turning to this wind, lay the maze of the lower
lands, the misty greens, rose pinks, and browns of the fields, and white
and grey dots and strokes of cottages and church towers, fading into
the blue veil of distance, confined by a far range of hills. Behind
him there was nothing but the restless surface of the moor, coloured
purplish-brown. On that untamed sea of graven wildness could be seen
no ship of man, save one, on the far horizon--the grim hulk, Dartmoor
Prison. There was no sound, no scent, and it seemed to Miltoun as if his
spirit had left his body, and become part of the solemnity