transparent lids before her eyes; they were too full of light and love to show to any mortal.

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The sky was white and blue, the air 27 fresh and sweet; the swallows had just come, and were chattering with the starlings; hundreds of daffodils “danced in the wind” and lighted the ground at their feet; troops of celandines starred the brook that babbled by the bee-skips; the southernwood, the wall-flower, the budding thyme and sweet-brier,—a thousand exhalations filled the air and intensified that intoxication of heart and senses which makes the first stage of love’s fever delirious.

The sky was

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Fenwick went away in the afternoon, and his adieus were mostly made to the Squire. He had done his best to win his favour, and he had been successful. He left Seat-Ambar under an engagement to return soon and try his skill in wrestling and pole-leaping with Brune. Aspatria knew he would return: a voice which Fenwick’s voice only echoed told her so. She watched him from her own window across the meadows, and up the mountain, until he was lost to her vision.

She was doubtless very much in love, 28 though as yet she had not admitted the fact to herself. The experience had come with a really shocking swiftness. Her heart was half angry and half abashed by its instantaneous surrender. Two circumstances had promoted this condition. First, the singular charm of the man. Ulfar Fenwick was unlike any one she had ever seen. The squires and gentlemen who came to Seat-Ambar were physically the finest fellows in England, but noble women look for something more than mere bulk in a man. Sir Ulfar Fenwick had this something more. Culture, travel, great experience with women, had added to his heroic form a charm flesh and sinew alone could never compass. And if he had lacked all other physical advantages, he possessed eyes which had been filled to the brim with experiences of every kind,—gray eyes with pure, full lids thickly fringed,—eyes always lustrous, sometimes piercingly bright. Secondly, Aspatria had no knowledge which helped her to ward off attack or protract surrender. In a 29 multitude of lovers there is safety; but Fenwick was Aspatria’s first lover.

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He rode hard, as if he would ride from fate. Perhaps he hoped at this early stage of feeling to do as he had often done before,—

To love—and then ride away.

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