Why was it that Aunt Letitia’s gibes and fables recurred with such vividness to his mind? He had not heeded them before the crisis; wherefore should he heed them now? He wished somehow that Wilson had not loved the girl ten years ago; ten years were ten years—despite idealism. What was amiss with him that the happy reunion of the morning lost some of its glamour and assumed the suggestive notion of a net? Surely he was not for recovering his own liberty, that liberty that had weighed as a mere feather in the balance against honor? Was not Jilian sweet and amiable, and still a girl, though older than himself? Surely he could imagine a father in Sir Peter and a worthy brother in honest Lot? And yet the vapor of melancholy persisted in Richard Jeffray’s mind, despite his angry reasonings with himself. He had been happy in the morning, righteously and sincerely happy. Why this loosening of the cords of confidence, this morbid introspection that suggested the possibility of error.
The day was such a one as begets the ideal of spring in the heart, warm, fragrant, like a dewy dawn in June. The hills and valleys were bathed in silvery light, a light more delicate and rare than the glare of summer. All the colors of the landscape were soft and beautiful, the dusky greens, the purples, the browns, the blue mistiness of the distant downs. On the far hills beyond Pevensel a piece of ploughed land would flash up almost as gold under the sun, or a chalk cliff glisten like foam at the throat of a bursting billow. The meadows in the lowlands were like a mosaic of emeralds set in silver.
Jeffray took the western track that plunged into Pevensel by White Hard Ghyll. The pines and firs stood out a rich and generous green against the sensitive azure of the sky, while the olive-colored trunks of the oaks upheld the purple feltwork of swelling buds above. The yellow palm was flashing in the breeze; primroses shone everywhere amid the moss and leaves. The ragged and tempestuous gorse flamed about the listening shadows of the woods. The track ran down into the wastes and crossed the stream that fretted by the ruins of the old Abbey of Holy Cross.
Richard had not seen the place since he had climbed and hunted there as a boy in the days when life flew fast and without thought. Holy Cross was a mile or more from the hamlet of the foresters, and perhaps some insensible magic drew Jeffray towards this relic of Popish power. The monastic calm, the glow of ancient memories, would be in keeping with the temper of the day. Certainly Mr. Richard was not anxious to return to the society of the Lady Letitia, and he found sufficient friendship in his thoughts. Yet the sly plea crept in amid the rest, for if chance favored him he might catch sight of Bess amid the woods, and learn how fortune had served her since she had nursed him in old Ursula’s cottage.