herself. One never knows. At any rate, her attitude was chilling. So
as regarded the incident in the Banqueting Hall he preserved entire
silence. Her scepticism was too complacent to be attacked.

He was aroused next morning by the sweetest of country sounds--the
sound of a scythe upon the lawn. Then there came the distant call of
the street flower-seller, "All a-growing, all a-blowing," which he
remembered as long as he could remember anything. The world was waking
up, but it was yet early--not more than half-past six at the very
latest. So he lay quietly and contentedly in his white bed, lazily
wondering how it would feel in the Banqueting Hall at that early hour,
and what it would be like there in the dead of night, and how soon it
would be proper for him to go and leave a card on Mr St Aubyn, and
what Lubin would think of it all, and how it was he had never before
noticed that great crack in the ceiling just above his head. At last
he slipped carefully out of bed without waiting for Martha to bring
him his hot water, and hopped as best he could to the open window and
looked out. There was Lubin, mowing vigorously away, and the air was
full of sweet garden scents and the early twittering of birds. He
could not go back to bed after that, but proceeded forthwith to dress.

After a hurried toilet, he bumped his way downstairs; intercepted the
dairyman, from whom he extorted a great draught of milk, and then
went into the garden. How sweet it was, that breath of morning air!
Lubin had just finished mowing the lawn, and the perfume of the cool
grass, damp with the night's dew, seemed to pervade the world. No one
else was stirring; there was nothing to jar his nerves; everything was
harmonious, fresh, beautiful, and young. And the harmony of it all
consisted in this, that Austin was fresh, and beautiful, and young
himself.